Comparing TwoTasks assessing Cognitive linguistic abilities in younger and older individuals

Abstract

Cognition is the mental processes where message can be encoded, stored, retrieved and used as decoded information. Recall and list generation tasks are few major tasks widely used in assessing cognitive abilities.The study aimed to assess cognitive linguistic abilities by comparing two tasks in younger and older individuals. Two groups of subjects were recruited in the study based on age range. Group 1 had 30 male adults of 20-30 years and Group 2 had 30 male adults of 55-65 years. The subjects were examined for list generation and serial delayed recall tasks. The responses for each task were recorded and converted into percentage. The result showed that the serial delayed recall abilities alone significantly varied in performance, wherein the elderly performed poorer compared to younger group. This was attributed to various cognitive linguistic processing deterioration occurring with aging. Hence, the results of this study suggested usefulness of serial delayed recall task in assessing cognitive linguistic abilities among older individuals and further inferring that serial delayed recall task can be sensitive in detecting age related cognitive decline .
Key words: Cognitive- Linguistic, List generation and Delayed recall