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Effects of health status on word finding in aging.

ABSTRACT: To evaluate effects of health status on word-finding difficulty in aging, adjusting for the known contributors of education, sex, and ethnicity.Cross-sectional.Community.Two hundred eighty-four adults aged 55 to 85 (48.6% female) participating in an ongoing longitudinal study of language in aging.Medical, neurological, and laboratory evaluations to determine health status and presence or absence of hypertension and diabetes mellitus. Lexical retrieval evaluated with the Boston Naming Test (BNT) and Action Naming Test.Unadjusted regression models showed that presence of diabetes mellitus was not related to naming. Presence of hypertension was associated with significantly lower accuracy on both tasks (P<.02). Adjustment for demographics attenuated the effect of hypertension (P<.08). For the BNT, a variable combining presence, treatment, and control of hypertension was marginally significant (P<.10), with subjects with uncontrolled hypertension being least accurate (91.4%). Previously observed findings regarding the effects of age, education, sex, and ethnicity were confirmed.In this sample of older adults, hypertension contributed to the word-finding difficulty of normal aging, but diabetes mellitus did not.

SUBMITTER: Albert ML

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2946242 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Effects of health status on word finding in aging.

Albert Martin L ML Spiro Avron A Sayers Keely J KJ Cohen Jason A JA Brady Christopher B CB Goral Mira M Obler Loraine K LK

Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 20091201 12

<h4>Objectives</h4>To evaluate effects of health status on word-finding difficulty in aging, adjusting for the known contributors of education, sex, and ethnicity.<h4>Design</h4>Cross-sectional.<h4>Setting</h4>Community.<h4>Participants</h4>Two hundred eighty-four adults aged 55 to 85 (48.6% female) participating in an ongoing longitudinal study of language in aging.<h4>Measurements</h4>Medical, neurological, and laboratory evaluations to determine health status and presence or absence of hypert ...[more]

PMID: 20121990

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Project description:PurposeEarly cognitive symptoms such as word-finding difficulty (WFD) in daily conversation are common in Parkinson's disease (PD), but studies have been limited by a lack of feasible, quantitative measures. Linguistic analysis, focused on pauses in speech, may yield markers of impairment of cognition and communication in PD. The objective of this study was to evaluate the relationship of linguistic markers in semistructured speech to WFD symptoms and cognitive function in PD.MethodSpeech recordings of description of the Cookie Theft picture in 53 patients with PD without dementia and 23 elderly controls were analyzed with Praat software. Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA; Nasreddine et al., 2005), category naming fluency, and confrontation naming tests were administered. Questionnaires rating WFD symptoms and cognitive instrumental activities of daily living were completed. We determined the relationships between (a) pause length and location, (b) MoCA score, and (c) WFD symptoms, using Pearson's correlations and multivariate regression models.ResultsCompared with controls, patients with PD had more pauses within utterances as well as fewer words per minute and a lower percentage of well-formed sentences. Pauses within utterances differed significantly between PD-mild cognitive impairment and normal cognition (p < .001). Words per minute and percentage of well-formed sentences were predictive of MoCA in multivariate regression models. Pauses before verbs were associated with patient-reported severity of WFD symptoms (p = .006).ConclusionsLinguistic markers including pauses within utterances distinguish patients with PD with mild cognitive symptoms from elderly controls. These markers are associated with global cognitive function before the onset of dementia. Pauses before verbs and grammatical markers may index early cognitive symptoms such as WFD that may interfere with functional communication.Supplemental materialhttps://doi.org/10.23641/asha.6615401.

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Effects of health status on word finding in aging.

Publications

Effects of health status on word finding in aging.

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