scholarly journals The Impact of Bilingualism on Cognitive Functioning in Older Adults

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 295-296
Author(s):  
Hillary Rouse ◽  
Brent Small ◽  
John Schinka

Abstract Research on bilingualism has found inconsistent results regarding its potential benefit on the cognitive abilities of older adults. The goal of the current study was to evaluate differences in cognition on a wide array of neuropsychological assessments between monolingual and bilingual cognitively healthy older adults who specifically speak only English and/or Spanish. The sample included cognitively intact older adults who were either monolingual (n=247) English speakers or bilingual (n=42) in English and Spanish. Performance was compared between groups from a battery of neuropsychological assessments that measured executive function, attention, short-term memory, and episodic memory. Compared to English and Spanish bilinguals, monolingual English speakers performed significantly better on a variety of tasks within the domains of executive function, attention, and short-term memory. No significant differences were found in favor of the bilinguals on any domain of cognitive performance. In the present study, we failed to observe a significant advantage for English and Spanish bilingual speakers on the cognitive performance of older adults when compared to monolingual English speakers. This study suggests that the bilingual advantage may not be as robust as originally reported, and the effects of bilingualism on cognition could be significantly impacted by the languages included in the study.

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric S. Cerino ◽  
Mindy J. Katz ◽  
Cuiling Wang ◽  
Jiyue Qin ◽  
Qi Gao ◽  
...  

Background and Objective: Within-person variability in cognitive performance has emerged as a promising indicator of cognitive health with potential to distinguish normative and pathological cognitive aging. We use a smartphone-based digital health approach with ecological momentary assessments (EMA) to examine differences in variability in performance among older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and those who were cognitively unimpaired (CU).Method: A sample of 311 systematically recruited, community-dwelling older adults from the Einstein Aging Study (Mean age = 77.46 years, SD = 4.86, Range = 70–90; 67% Female; 45% Non-Hispanic White, 40% Non-Hispanic Black) completed neuropsychological testing, neurological assessments, and self-reported questionnaires. One hundred individuals met Jak/Bondi criteria for MCI. All participants performed mobile cognitive tests of processing speed, visual short-term memory binding, and spatial working memory on a smartphone device up to six times daily for 16 days, yielding up to 96 assessments per person. We employed heterogeneous variance multilevel models using log-linear prediction of residual variance to simultaneously assess cognitive status differences in mean performance, within-day variability, and day-to-day variability. We further tested whether these differences were robust to the influence of environmental contexts under which assessments were performed.Results: Individuals with MCI exhibited greater within-day variability than those who were CU on ambulatory assessments that measure processing speed (p < 0.001) and visual short-term memory binding (p < 0.001) performance but not spatial working memory. Cognitive status differences in day-to-day variability were present only for the measure of processing speed. Associations between cognitive status and within-day variability in performance were robust to adjustment for sociodemographic and contextual variables.Conclusion: Our smartphone-based digital health approach facilitates the ambulatory assessment of cognitive performance in older adults and the capacity to differentiate individuals with MCI from those who were CU. Results suggest variability in mobile cognitive performance is sensitive to MCI and exhibits dissociative patterns by timescale and cognitive domain. Variability in processing speed and visual short-term memory binding performance may provide specific detection of MCI. The 16-day smartphone-based EMA measurement burst offers novel opportunity to leverage digital technology to measure performance variability across frequent assessments for studying cognitive health and identifying early clinical manifestations of cognitive impairment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 985
Author(s):  
Shenghua Lu ◽  
Fabian Herold ◽  
Yanjie Zhang ◽  
Yuruo Lei ◽  
Arthur F. Kramer ◽  
...  

Objective: There is growing evidence that in adults, higher levels of handgrip strength (HGS) are linked to better cognitive performance. However, the relationship between HGS and cognitive performance has not been sufficiently investigated in special cohorts, such as individuals with hypertension who have an intrinsically higher risk of cognitive decline. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between HGS and cognitive performance in adults with hypertension using data from the Global Ageing and Adult Health Survey (SAGE). Methods: A total of 4486 Chinese adults with hypertension from the SAGE were included in this study. Absolute handgrip strength (aHGS in kilograms) was measured using a handheld electronic dynamometer, and cognitive performance was assessed in the domains of short-term memory, delayed memory, and language ability. Multiple linear regression models were fitted to examine the association between relative handgrip strength (rHGS; aHGS divided by body mass index) and measures of cognitive performance. Results: Overall, higher levels of rHGS were associated with higher scores in short-term memory (β = 0.20) and language (β = 0.63) compared with the lowest tertiles of rHGS. In male participants, higher HGS was associated with higher scores in short-term memory (β = 0.31), language (β = 0.64), and delayed memory (β = 0.22). There were no associations between rHGS and cognitive performance measures in females. Conclusion: We observed that a higher level of rHGS was associated with better cognitive performance among hypertensive male individuals. Further studies are needed to investigate the neurobiological mechanisms, including sex-specific differences driving the relationship between measures of HGS and cognitive performance in individuals with hypertension.


ReCALL ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Chi Yang ◽  
Peichin Chang

AbstractFor many EFL learners, listening poses a grave challenge. The difficulty in segmenting a stream of speech and limited capacity in short-term memory are common weaknesses for language learners. Specifically, reduced forms, which frequently appear in authentic informal conversations, compound the challenges in listening comprehension. Numerous interventions have been implemented to assist EFL language learners, and of these, the application of captions has been found highly effective in promoting learning. Few studies have examined how different modes of captions may enhance listening comprehension. This study proposes three modes of captions: full, keyword-only, and annotated keyword captions and investigates their contribution to the learning of reduced forms and overall listening comprehension. Forty-four EFL university students participated in the study and were randomly assigned to one of the three groups. The results revealed that all three groups exhibited improvement on the pre-test while the annotated keyword caption group exhibited the best performance with the highest mean score. Comparing performances between groups, the annotated keyword caption group also emulated both the full caption and the keyword-only caption groups, particularly in the ability to recognize reduced forms. The study sheds light on the potential of annotated keyword captions in enhancing reduced forms learning and overall listening comprehension.


2008 ◽  
Vol 46 (10) ◽  
pp. 2476-2484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Thomas ◽  
Peter J. Snyder ◽  
Robert H. Pietrzak ◽  
Colleen E. Jackson ◽  
Martin Bednar ◽  
...  

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 464-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clémence Verhaegen ◽  
Fabienne Collette ◽  
Steve Majerus

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Enda Du ◽  
Yuetian Liu ◽  
Ziyan Cheng ◽  
Liang Xue ◽  
Jing Ma ◽  
...  

Summary Accurate production forecasting is an essential task and accompanies the entire process of reservoir development. With the limitation of prediction principles and processes, the traditional approaches are difficult to make rapid predictions. With the development of artificial intelligence, the data-driven model provides an alternative approach for production forecasting. To fully take the impact of interwell interference on production into account, this paper proposes a deep learning-based hybrid model (GCN-LSTM), where graph convolutional network (GCN) is used to capture complicated spatial patterns between each well, and long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network is adopted to extract intricate temporal correlations from historical production data. To implement the proposed model more efficiently, two data preprocessing procedures are performed: Outliers in the data set are removed by using a box plot visualization, and measurement noise is reduced by a wavelet transform. The robustness and applicability of the proposed model are evaluated in two scenarios of different data types with the root mean square error (RMSE), the mean absolute error (MAE), and the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE). The results show that the proposed model can effectively capture spatial and temporal correlations to make a rapid and accurate oil production forecast.


Hydrology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mun-Ju Shin ◽  
Soo-Hyoung Moon ◽  
Kyung Goo Kang ◽  
Duk-Chul Moon ◽  
Hyuk-Joon Koh

To properly manage the groundwater resources, it is necessary to analyze the impact of groundwater withdrawal on the groundwater level. In this study, a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network was used to evaluate the groundwater level prediction performance and analyze the impact of the change in the amount of groundwater withdrawal from the pumping wells on the change in the groundwater level in the nearby monitoring wells located in Jeju Island, Korea. The Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency between the observed and simulated groundwater level was over 0.97. Therefore, the groundwater prediction performance of LSTM was remarkably high. If the groundwater level is simulated on the assumption that the future withdrawal amount is reduced by 1/3 of the current groundwater withdrawal, the range of the maximum rise of the groundwater level would be 0.06–0.13 m compared to the current condition. In addition, assuming that no groundwater is taken, the range of the maximum increase in the groundwater level would be 0.11–0.38 m more than the current condition. Therefore, the effect of groundwater withdrawal on the groundwater level in this area was exceedingly small. The method and results can be used to develop new groundwater withdrawal sources for the redistribution of groundwater withdrawals.


Author(s):  
Na Zhang ◽  
Song M. Du ◽  
Jian F. Zhang ◽  
Guan S. Ma

Water accounts for 75% of brain mass. Associations may exist between hydration and cognitive performance. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of dehydration and rehydration on cognitive performance and mood. In this self-control trial, 12 men were recruited from a medical college in Cangzhou, China. After 12 h of overnight fasting, the participants took baseline tests at 8:00 AM on day 2. First morning urine and blood osmolality were analyzed to determine hydration state. Height, weight, and blood pressure were measured following standardized procedures. A visual analog scale for the subjective sensation of thirst was applied, and a profile of mood states questionnaire was applied. Tests were conducted for cognitive performance, including a test of digit span forward and backward, digit-symbol substitutions, dose-work, and stroop effects. Participants were required not to drink water for 36 h but were given three meals on day 3. On day 4, the same indexes were tested as a baseline test. At 8:30 AM, participants drank 1500 mL of purified water over 15 min. After a 1 h interval, the same measurements were performed. Compared with baseline test results, during the dehydration test, participants had lower scores of vigor (11.9 vs. 8.8, %, p = 0.007) and esteem-related affect (8.2 vs. 5.7, %, p = 0.006), lower total scores of digit span (14.3 vs. 13.3, %, p = 0.004), and higher error rates for dose-work (0.01 vs. 0.16, %, p = 0.005). Compared with the dehydration test scores, rehydration test scores showed that fatigue (4.3 vs. 2.1, %, p = 0.005) and total mood disturbance (TMD) (99.0 vs. 90.2, %, p = 0.008) improved, and scores of forward, backward, and total digit span increased (7.7 vs. 8.6, p = 0.014; 5.7 vs. 1.2, p = 0.019; 13.3 vs. 15.4, p = 0.001). Increases were also noted in correct number of digit symbol substitutions, reading speed, and mental work ability (70.8 vs. 75.4, p < 0.001; 339.3 vs. 486.4, n/min, p < 0.001; 356.1 vs. 450.2, p < 0.001), and reaction time decreased (30.2 vs. 28.7, s, p = 0.002). As a conclusion, dehydration had negative effects on vigor, esteem-related affect, short-term memory, and attention. Rehydration after water supplementation alleviated fatigue and improved TMD, short-term memory, attention, and reaction.


Complexity ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Štifanić ◽  
Jelena Musulin ◽  
Adrijana Miočević ◽  
Sandi Baressi Šegota ◽  
Roman Šubić ◽  
...  

COVID-19 is an infectious disease that mostly affects the respiratory system. At the time of this research being performed, there were more than 1.4 million cases of COVID-19, and one of the biggest anxieties is not just our health, but our livelihoods, too. In this research, authors investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the global economy, more specifically, the impact of COVID-19 on the financial movement of Crude Oil price and three US stock indexes: DJI, S&P 500, and NASDAQ Composite. The proposed system for predicting commodity and stock prices integrates the stationary wavelet transform (SWT) and bidirectional long short-term memory (BDLSTM) networks. Firstly, SWT is used to decompose the data into approximation and detail coefficients. After decomposition, data of Crude Oil price and stock market indexes along with COVID-19 confirmed cases were used as input variables for future price movement forecasting. As a result, the proposed system BDLSTM + WT-ADA achieved satisfactory results in terms of five-day Crude Oil price forecast.


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