Abstract

The research proposed here will investigate the abilities of elderly subjects and patients with Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type (DAT) to understand sentences and to use the meaning of sentences to accomplish tasks. It will study different aspects of sentence comprehension tasks, providing new information about the abilities of elderly subjects and patients with DAT to process syntactic form and sentence meaning. It will examine the relationship between impairments in verbal working memory and those of sentence comprehension in these populations. It will also provide new information about changes in the neural basis for the process of sentence comprehension in elderly subjects and patients with DAT. The results of these studies will increase our understanding of the nature of the sentence comprehension process in aging and DAT, and the nature of the neural basis for this process in these populations.

  Funding Agency

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
2R01AG009661-06
Application #
2001355
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG2-HUD-2 (03))
Project Start
1997-05-01
Project End
1998-02-28
Budget Start
1997-05-01
Budget End
1998-02-28
Support Year
6
Fiscal Year
1997
Total Cost
Indirect Cost

  Institution

Name
Massachusetts General Hospital
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Boston
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
02199

  Publications

Evans, William S; Caplan, David; Ostrowski, Adam et al. (2015) Working memory and the revision of syntactic and discourse ambiguities. Can J Exp Psychol 69:136-55
Caplan, David; Dede, Gayle; Waters, Gloria et al. (2011) Effects of age, speed of processing, and working memory on comprehension of sentences with relative clauses. Psychol Aging 26:439-50
Evans, William S; Caplan, David; Waters, Gloria (2011) Effects of concurrent arithmetical and syntactic complexity on self-paced reaction times and eye fixations. Psychon Bull Rev 18:1203-11
Waters, Gloria; Caplan, David (2005) The relationship between age, processing speed, working memory capacity, and language comprehension. Memory 13:403-13
Waters, Gloria S; Caplan, David (2004) Verbal working memory and on-line syntactic processing: evidence from self-paced listening. Q J Exp Psychol A 57:129-63
DeDe, Gayle; Caplan, David; Kemtes, Karen et al. (2004) The relationship between age, verbal working memory, and language comprehension. Psychol Aging 19:601-16
Waters, G S; Caplan, D (2001) Age, working memory, and on-line syntactic processing in sentence comprehension. Psychol Aging 16:128-44
Caplan, D (2001) Functional neuroimaging studies of syntactic processing. J Psycholinguist Res 30:297-320
Rochon, E; Waters, G S; Caplan, D (2000) The relationship between measures of working memory and sentence comprehension in patients with Alzheimer's disease. J Speech Lang Hear Res 43:395-413
Caplan, D; Waters, G S (1999) Verbal working memory and sentence comprehension. Behav Brain Sci 22:77-94;discussion 95-126

Showing the most recent 10 out of 15 publications