Graph analysis of semantic word association among children, adults, and the elderly (original) (raw)

Semantic word association: comparative data for Brazilian children and adults

Psychology and Neuroscience, 2012

The construction of associated word lists is important for the elaboration of psychological and neuropsychological tasks and experiments. It remains unknown whether differences exist in the semantic associations of words from childhood to adulthood, possibly indicating important lexico-semantic developmental changes that influence neuropsychological assessment. The present study compared semantic word associations in children and adults in terms of forward associative strength and set size. The participants included 247 children from the third grade of elementary school, aged 7 to 11 years (M = 9.17 years, SD = 0.83 years), and 108 adults, aged 16 to 49 years (M = 22.17 years, SD = 6.04 years) from the study of . The task consisted of the participants responding to the first word that came to mind (associate) with a meaning related to each of 87 words presented aloud (target). The children's responses had significantly higher forward associative strength between the target and most frequent associate word and a smaller response diversity index. Although the meaning and total set size did not significantly differ between groups, 40.2% of the targets had a large meaning set size in the children compared with only 10.3% in the adults. Among the most strongly associated pairs, 56.3% were equal between the sample groups. These results suggest that the selection of stimuli for the construction of verbal cognitive tasks should consider specific word association norms for different ages.

The Aging Lexicon: Differences in the Semantic Networks of Younger and Older Adults

How does the mental lexicon, the network of learned words in our semantic memory, change in old age? To address this question, we employ a new network inference method to infer networks from verbal fluency data of a group of younger and older adults. We find that older adults produce more unique words in verbal fluency tasks than younger adults. In line with recent theorizing, this suggests a larger mental lexicon for older than for younger adults. Moreover, we find that relative to the mental lexicon of younger adults, the mental lexicon of older adults is less small-world-like. Based on several findings linking network clustering to processing speed, this finding suggests that not only the size, but also the structure of the mental lexicon may contribute to apparent cognitive decline in old age.

Age differences in semantic network structure: Acquiring knowledge shapes semantic memory

Psychology and Aging, 2023

Computational research suggests that semantic memory, operationalized as semantic memory networks, undergoes age-related changes. Previous work suggests that concepts in older adults’ semantic memory networks are more separated, more segregated, and less connected to each other. However, cognitive network research often relies on group averages (e.g., young vs. older adults), and it remains unclear if individual differences influence age-related disparities in language production abilities. Here, we analyze the properties of younger and older participants’ individual-based semantic memory networks, based on their semantic relatedness judgments. We related individual-based network measures—clustering coefficient (connectivity), global efficiency, and modularity (structure)—to language production (verbal fluency) and vocabulary knowledge. Similar to previous findings, we found significant age effects: clustering coefficient and global efficiency were lower, and modularity was higher, for older adults. Furthermore, vocabulary knowledge was significantly related to the semantic memory network measures: corresponding with the age effects, clustering coefficient and global efficiency had a negative relationship, while modularity had a positive relationship, with vocabulary knowledge. More generally, vocabulary knowledge significantly increased with age, which may reflect the critical role that the accumulation of knowledge within semantic memory has on its structure. These results highlight the impact of diverse life experiences on older adults’ semantic memory and demonstrate the importance of accounting for individual differences in the aging mental lexicon.

Um estudo sobre associação semântica de palavras do português brasileiro

CoDAS, 2016

To collect the semantic association norms of 96 Brazilian Portuguese words for further application in the formulation of a speech recognition test using sentences with controlled word predictability. Study participants were 67 volunteers aged 18 to 27 years. A semantic association task with word class delimitation was used. The mean sizes of the total and meaning sets were larger in the second recall to both verb and noun classes. The prevalent semantic association strength in the first recall was strong to the first word and moderate to the second word. In the second recall, the prevalent semantic association strength was moderate to both the first and second words. Significant negative correlation was observed between association strength and total and meaning set sizes. The semantic association norms of 96 Brazilian Portuguese words were collected as proposed and resulted in semantic associates for each target word in the verb and noun classes that were used in a speech recogniti...

Semantic Memory Organization in Children and Young Adults

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2014

The study of the organization of semantic memory has become of great interest in the cognitive psychology field and in neuropsychological research. Semantic knowledge considered to be represented by concepts, which can be related taxonomically (when they are hierarchically organized) or thematically (when they are linked by cross-categorical relations). Both relations arise from distinct processes, as evidenced by numerous neuropsychological and behavioral dissociations. Many works have stated that the production of thematic relations outnumbers that of taxonomic relations in children, and that as they grow older a thematic-to-taxonomic shift occurs, while others claim that such a shift does not take place and state that one major problem is that the tasks used in previous studies to assess concept-relations are biased. In our work we performed a feature production task in such a way that subjects could freely associate concepts with their features. Our results, using this non-biased-task, show that the evocation of taxonomic relations was higher in the adult group (formed by thirty 20-to 40-year-olds) compared to the children group (formed by forty-eight 6-to 9-year-olds), but that, nonetheless, thematic relations were still present in the adult group. This suggests, instead of a thematic-to-taxonomic shift in adulthood, the coexistence of both types of relations, which is crucial to research on language structure and conceptual knowledge. Thus, our results contribute to the understanding of semantic knowledge organization and provide valuable groundwork to the development of clinical instruments used in neuropsychological tests to assess language, attention and semantic memory, where precise information of concept-relations is crucial.

Effects of age and education on the lexico-semantic content of connected speech in adults, 1998

Journal of Communication Disorders, 1998

One hundred and thirty-three subjects who considered themselves to be in good health described the bank robbery picture from an aphasia battery for French-speaking subjects. The subjects’ connected speech was analyzed and various lexico-semantic measures were obtained. For the purposes of analysis, the subjects were grouped according to age and education level. Results demonstrated that subjects with fewer years of education produced less content than subjects with higher levels of education. Age also affected subjects’ performance but only when considering efficiency, the number of content units as a function of time, and the number of different open-class words as a function of time. Older subjects tended to repeat the same content units (using mostly the same words) and comment on some word-finding difficulties they experienced. These behaviors may explain why older subjects were less efficient in the transmission of lexico-semantic information. The results emphasize how age can affect lexico-semantic performance, and add new data about the effects of education, which should be taken into consideration when assessing persons who may show signs of a language disorder.