Category Norms for Korean Adults Age 55 to 74

Category production norms for 117 concrete and abstract categories

We present a database of category production (aka semantic fluency) norms collected in the UK for 117 categories (67 concrete and 50 abstract). Participants verbally named as many category members as possible within 60 seconds, resulting in a large variety of over 2000 generated member concepts. The norms feature common measures of category production (production frequency, mean ordinal rank, first-rank frequency), as well as response times for all first-named category members, and typicality ratings collected from a separate participant sample. We provide two versions of the dataset: a referential version that groups together responses that relate to the same referent (e.g., hippo, hippopotamus) and a full version that retains all original responses to enable future lexical analysis. Correlational analyses with previous norms from the USA and UK demonstrate both consistencies and differences in English-language norms over time and between geographical regions. Further exploration of the norms reveals a number of structural and psycholinguistic differences between abstract and concrete categories. The data and analyses will be of use in the fields of cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, psycholinguistics, and cognitive modelling, and to any researchers interested in semantic category structure. All data, including original participant recordings, are available at https://osf.io/jgcu6/ .

Effects of working memory intervention on language production by individuals with dementia

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of working memory intervention on language production by people with mild or moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD). A total of 39 AD patients, 21 with mild AD and 18 with moderate AD and 18 normal controls were given 18 sessions of working memory intervention. After these sessions, the transfer effects and maintenance effects at the 3-month follow-up were assessed. A word-span task and a digit-span task were used to evaluate working memory. Language-production abilities were compared through four tasks: a verbal fluency, a confrontation naming, a word definition, and a picture-description task. Task performances of working memory and language production were the lowest in the baseline stage and the highest in the transfer-effect stage. The three groups had transfer effects in all tasks, while the maintenance effects were limited by groups and tasks. This study proves that working memory intervention for AD patients is effective for language production. In addition, we have paved the way for working memory intervention to improve language production by AD patients in clinical settings by presenting the transfer and maintenance effect for each task of language production.

Transfer Effects of Working Memory Intervention on Linguistic Abilities in Patients with Dementia

Purpose: Working memory training for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients may yield everyday cognitive- linguistic benefits by facilitating transfer effects in multiple domains. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of working memory intervention and differences on transfer effects in type of intervention paradigm like core training (CT) and strategy training (ST).Methods: A total of 24 patients with mild and moderate AD were divided into CT and ST group (n = 12, respectively). After CT and ST interventions, we assessed their transfer effects on linguistic abilities including reading comprehension, figurative language, word fluency, and discourse production. Results: There were three main findings. Firstly, CT group improved significantly in figurative language, word fluency, and discourse production. Secondly, ST group showed the significant intervention gains in figurative language and discourse production. Thirdly, CT group had higher transfer effects in figurative language and discourse production than ST group, while both were similar in other transfer effects.Conclusion: This study proves that effects of working memory intervention for AD patients are different in type of paradigm, and thereby presents a roadmap for increasing the efficacy and utilization of working memory intervention in clinical settings.