Changing Minds - Richard Roberts

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Auteur(s) : Richard Roberts - Roger Kreuz

Editeur : Mit Press

Langue : Anglais

Parution : 01/12/2020

Format : Moyen, de 350g à 1kg

Nombre de pages : 288

Expédition : 295

Dimensions : 19.5 x 13.2 x 2.0

ISBN : 9780262539586

Résumé :
Why language ability remains resilient and how it shapes our lives.

We acquire our native language, seemingly without effort, in infancy and early childhood. Language is our constant companion throughout our lifetime, even as we age. Indeed, compared with other aspects of cognition, language seems to be fairly resilient through the process of aging. In Changing Minds, Roger Kreuz and Richard Roberts examine how aging affects language—and how language affects aging.

Kreuz and Roberts report that what appear to be changes in an older person's language ability are actually produced by declines in such other cognitive processes as memory and perception. Some language abilities, including vocabulary size and writing ability, may even improve with age. And certain language activities—including reading fiction and engaging in conversation—may even help us live fuller and healthier lives.

Kreuz and Roberts explain the cognitive processes underlying our language ability, exploring in particular how changes in these processes lead to changes in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. They consider, among other things, the inability to produce a word that's on the tip of your tongue—and suggest that the increasing incidence of this with age may be the result of a surfeit of world knowledge. For example, older people can be better storytellers, and (something to remember at a family reunion) their perceived tendency toward off-topic verbosity may actually reflect communicative goals.

Biographie:
Roger Kreuz is Associate Dean and Director of Graduate Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Psychology at the University of Memphis. He is the coauthor (with Richard Roberts) of Becoming Fluent: How Cognitive Science Can Help Adults Learn a Foreign Language, Getting Through: The Pleasures and Perils of Cross-Cultural Communication, and Changing Minds: How Aging Affects Language and How Language Affects Aging (all published by the MIT Press).

Richard Roberts is a Foreign Service Officer currently serving as the Public Affairs Officer at the US Consulate General in Okinawa, Japan. He is the coauthor (with Roger Kreuz) of of Becoming Fluent: How Cognitive Science Can Help Adults Learn a Foreign Language and Getting Through: The Pleasures and Perils of Cross-Cultural Communication, both published by the MIT Press....

Sommaire:
Acknowledgments
Prologue: How Aging Affects Language . . . and How Language Affects Aging
Chapter 1: Setting the Stage
Language by Design
Comparing Apples to Oranges
Components of Cognition
The Compensation of Language
Chapter 2: The Language of Sight and Sound
Do You Hear What I See?
A Look at Hearing
Tinnitus
Voice Quality
Speaking of Vision
Presbyopia
Making Sense of Feelings
Chapter 3: The Story of Speech
Word Finding
Word Naming
Speech Disfluency
Stuttering
Aphasia
Dyslexia
Foreign Accent Syndrome
Chapter 4: Word Domination
Stressed Out
Spelling Ability
Vocabulary Size
Verbal Fluency
Grammatical Complexity
Off-Topic Verbosity
Telling Stories
Chapter 5: Using Language
Pragmatic Competence
Nonliteral Language
Can Spring Chickens Teach Old Dogs New Tricks?
Elderspeak
Living with More Than One Language
The Benefits of Bilingualism?
Chapter 6: The Write Stuff
Healing Through Language
Reminiscing
Late Bloomers
Writer's Block
The Destroyer of Minds
Lessons from the Nuns
Fiction is Stronger Than Truth
Epilogue
About the Authors
References