Language / Dementia Correlation
July 9th, 2009 | View Comments
A former linguistics classmate posted a link to this article from the BBC News website on her Facebook. Turns out “superior language skills” in your 20s may be an indicator against dementia.
The study looked at 38 Catholic nuns and analyzed their brains post-mortem. Analysis of sample essays written in their 20s for complex language skills and grammar was also done.
The women who had better memory in their later years scored higher in language skills.
Superior grammar skills, however, showed no correlation.
I’d be curious to see a more extensive study, given that this study was only done on a group of 38 nuns. I’m especially curious to see one that includes men, given the preconception that men are more linguistically challenged than women.
If anything you can have fun being a polyglot by asking the nursing home staff for water in eight different languages, provided you remember them.
Peter posted this on July 9th, 2009 @ 12:40pm in Language Psychology | Permalink to "Language / Dementia Correlation"
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