Language as a reflection of person’s cognitive status in late adulthood

Introduction: topical for present-day psychology problem of psychological peculiarities of persons at the age of late adulthood is considered in the article. Possibility to use language and speech as a basis for cognitive functioning study is considered as well. Thought-language problem is traditional for psychology but the main scope is of theoretical character. The proposed study is an empiric one.

Materials and methods: a number of procedures have been used to reveal interrelations between language and different types of thinking (divergent, convergent and conceptual). J. Guilford’s test was used for divergent thinking, R. Kettell’s Culture-Fair Intelligence Test, CFIT was used for convergent thinking and B.V. Zejgarnik’s test for conceptual one. Stroop’s test was used for cognitive flexibility measurement. Direct association test and Chain association test were used for language study. 84 respondents aged 25-84 participated in the study. By means of cluster analysis they were divided into four groups with average of 28,6, 52,4, 64,9 and 75,8 years.

Results: comparative analysis reveals statistically significant differences only for paradigmatic reactions. Factor and regression analyses were used for analysis of interrelations between language and different types of thinking.

The results showed that only characteristics of convergent thinking correlate with language indices that characterized its complexity.

Discussion and Conclusions: dynamic characteristics of language correlate with person’s cognitive flexibility. But these dynamic characteristics do not change with person’s age and their use for thinking diagnostic in late adulthood is disputable. 

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