Abstract
Our paper introduces and discusses the present state of an ongoing interdisciplinary research project designed to explore the nature of the link between language repertoire and cognitive functioning in elderly. By the early 1960s, a research paradigm emerged that dealt with the correlation between the phenomenon of bilingualism and cognition. Having gone through several stages marked by sharp controversy, this research stream produced a branching arm in the early 2000s that revisited the question of the interrelationship between the language situation and cognition in the context of global population ageing. Researchers asked themselves whether bilingualism has an influence on age-related dementia in elderly. Looking back on more than 80 years of research, we realize that a deep chasm of extreme dissonance degrades the entire field to an arid terrain: Some have found that the question of whether bilingualism has a positive effect on cognitive abilities and promotes cognitive and neural reserve must be answered in the affirmative, while others have found exactly the opposite. On the one hand, our contribution deals with the reasons for this lack of substantial results by demonstrating that this persistent failure can be traced back causally to two fundamental fallacies in the basic theoretical settings of the research paradigm. On the other hand, we present and discuss our alternative theoretical approach. In this context, we also present the first results of our clinical survey “language repertoire and mental health in the elderly”, which has been running for over a year.
Presenters
Abdurrahman GülbeyazFaculty Member, School of Global Humanities and Social Sciences, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan Memet Gülbeyaz
Head, Medical Care Centre, Neurology and Psychiatry, Neuropsychiatrie Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Social and Cultural Perspectives on Aging
KEYWORDS
Age-related Dementia, Language, Language Repertoire, Neurology, Neurolinguistics, Semiotics
