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Ue Kerman N 2008
Ue Kerman N 2008
com
Abstract
Recent investigations have emphasized the involvement of fronto-subcortical networks to proverb comprehension. Although the pre-
frontal cortex is thought to be affected by normal aging, relatively little work has been carried out to investigate potential effects of aging
on proverb comprehension.
In the present investigation participants in three age groups were assessed on a proverb comprehension task and a range of executive
function tasks.
The older group showed impairment in selecting correct interpretations from alternatives. They also showed executive function def-
icits, as reflected by reduced working memory and deficient set shifting and inhibition abilities.
The findings of the present investigation showed proverb comprehension deficits in normal aging which appeared to be related to
reduced executive skills.
2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
0278-2626/$ - see front matter 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2007.11.003
52 J. Uekermann et al. / Brain and Cognition 67 (2008) 51–57
The first part of the task assesses familiarity ratings for range: 19–67). Analysis yielded item difficulty indices of
each proverb. A five-point-response scale ranging from ‘‘I at least .75 for all proverbs. Item difficulty was calculated
have never read or heard this proverb before’’ to ‘‘I have according to Lienert and Raatz (1998):
frequently read or heard this proverb’’ was used for this P = 100 · Nr/N with Nr = Number of participants who
purpose. completed the task and N = Number of all participants.
In the second part of the task, subjects are instructed to
choose the figurative, non-literal meaning of each proverb 4. Executive function
out of four response alternatives which vary along two
dimensions: the degree of abstraction (abstract/ figurative 4.1. Inhibition
vs. concretistic/ literal) and meaningfulness (meaningful
vs. meaningless). These dimensions are based on the proce- Inhibition of a habitual response was assessed by the
dure used by Barth and Kufferle (2001) in their Austrian Stroop test (Bäumler, 1985). The participants were told
version of a proverbs task. The dimension ‘‘abstraction’’ to read aloud colour words (printed in black ink) as fast
refers to the degree to which all metaphoric expressions as possible (reading), to name the colour of coloured lines
in the proverb have been replaced by an abstract interpre- (naming), and to name the ink colour of colour words
tation. Meaningfulness on the other hand relates to the printed in an incongruent colour, such as ‘‘RED’’ in green
question whether the content of the proverb has been ade- ink (interference). The time taken for each task was
quately understood by the subject. In contrast to Barth and recorded and the time to complete the third condition
Kufferle (2001), we did not include a distinction between reflects inhibition.
‘‘partially’’ and ‘‘highly’’ concretistic response options.
Of the four response alternatives, Type I responses 4.2. Set shifting
(abstract, meaningful) represent the only correct response
by giving an abstract interpretation of the metaphoric Speed of information processing and set shifting were
expressions in the proverb which adequately mirrors the assessed by the Trail Making Test (Reitan, 1992). In part
proverb content. The correct responses are based on the A, participants drew lines to connect numbers in ascending
proverb explanations provided by the lexicon of German order. In the part B, which reflects set shifting, they were
proverbs and idioms (Duden, 2002), while the other asked to alternate between numbers and letters, in ascend-
response options were developed according to the follow- ing order (e.g., 1-A-2-B). Time taken for completion of
ing criteria. Type II responses are abstract, but do not each part was recorded.
make sense with regard to the meaning of the proverb in
question, Type III responses are meaningful and thus ade- 4.3. Short-term and working memory
quately mirror the content of the proverb but remain con-
cretistic while Type IV are both concretistic and Short-term was assessed by the forward digit span task
meaningless. The order of the four response types is ran- and working memory was measured using the backward
domized across items (see Table 2 for an example of an digit span subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence
item and of each type of response). Scales-revised (Wechsler, 1981). In the forward condition,
In a pilot study, the proverbs task was administered to a sequences of numbers read out by the experimenter have
sample of 87 healthy subjects (30 male, 57 female; age to be repeated. In the backward task, digit sequences have
Table 2
Example of a proverb item and the four response alternatives
Abstract Concretistic
Item 6: ‘‘Barking dogs seldom bite’’
Meaningful Type I (correct response): Those who rant loudly, usually leave it Type III: A dog is not able to bark and bite at the same time. So you
at that; those who cast horrible threats, rarely carry them out do not need to be afraid of a barking dog
Meaningless Type II: It is useless to try to attract attention at any time; Type IV: If a dog wants something, it starts to bite
sometimes it might be better to remain in the background
Item 15: ‘‘All that glitters is not gold’’
Meaningful Type I (correct response): Things are often not what they seem Type III: Metals which are less valuable than gold may also glitter
to be (e.g., silver or steel). Thus, glitter alone is no indicator of a high value
Meaningless Type II: Life is not only about becoming rich, because that alone Type IV:Gold is not the most valuable of all metals
does not make anyone happy
Item 17: ‘‘Rome was not built in a day’’
Meaningful Type I (correct response): It takes its time to accomplish Type III: It took the Romans several centuries in order to build the
important things city of Rome
Meaningless Type II: People who are lazy and work very slowly, accomplish Type IV: It takes several days in order to visit Rome because the
their goals only with great effort important monuments in this city are so numerous
54 J. Uekermann et al. / Brain and Cognition 67 (2008) 51–57
5.2.5. Correlational analyses (p = .003) and years of education (p < .001) with an
5.2.5.1. Correlations in the younger group. Correlational adjusted R2 = .30.
analyses including executive functions (working memory,
inhibition, set shifting) and proverb comprehension (cor- 7. Discussion
rect, abstract-meaningless, concretistic-meaningful and
concretistic-meaningless interpretations), yielded signifi- The present study aimed to assess age effects on proverb
cant associations between the number of correct interpreta- comprehension, focusing on the potential contributions of
tions, set shifting corrected for overall slowing (r = .43; proverb familiarity and executive function abilities. As the
p = .01), and working memory (r = .36; p = .03). middle aged and younger subjects, older people most com-
monly chose the correct interpretation, although less fre-
5.2.5.2. Correlations in the middle group. Analyses yielded quently so. They also made more errors in terms of
significant correlations between working memory and the choosing abstract-meaningless, concretistic-meaningful
number of correct interpretations (r = 50; p = .002), and concretistic-meaningless interpretations more fre-
abstract-meaningless (r = .53; p = .001) and concret- quently than the other groups. As expected, older people
istic-meaningless interpretations (r = .43; p = .01). also showed executive function impairments relative to
younger subjects, as reflected by reduced working memory,
set shifting and inhibition abilities.
5.2.5.3. Correlations in the older group. Correlational anal-
Taken together, the findings of the present investigation
yses yielded significant associations between the number of
suggest impaired proverb comprehension in older subjects.
correct interpretations and working memory (r = .37;
This is consistent with the study by Nippold et al. (1997),
p = .03). In addition, the number of abstract-meaningless
who reported age-associated changes in the ability to
interpretations correlated significantly with corrected
describe proverb meaning in an open format. This study
(r = .36; p = .03) and uncorrected errors (r = .34, p = .05).
did not include familiarity ratings and error analyses. The
present findings indicate that proverbs were more familiar
5.2.5.4. Partial correlations. To further investigate the ques- to older people than younger people, and lack of familiar-
tion whether executive functions impairments contribute to ity does thus not underlie the observed proverb compre-
proverb interpretation deficits, correlational analyses con- hension deficits.
trolling for effects of age and years of education were per- With regard to types of errors, older subjects showed a
formed. The results for analyses including all participants tendency towards more concretistic-meaningful interpreta-
are illustrated in Table 4. tions than younger subjects. Interpretation of proverbs in a
literal rather than in an abstract way has been most consis-
6. Regression analysis tently observed in schizophrenia (Benjamin, 1944; Brüne &
Bodenstein, 2005; Mitchell & Crow, 2005). Schizophrenia
In order to further investigate the associations between patients fail to recruit the left inferior frontal and the right
executive functions and proverb comprehension in the lateral temporal cortices during metaphor processing (Kir-
sample with all participants, multiple regression analyses cher et al., 2007), brain areas which have also been shown
were performed using the ‘‘enter method’’ with proverb to be particularly affected during normal aging.
comprehension (number of correct interpretations) as Why do older people choose more concretistic
dependent variable and years of education as well as work- interpretations? Processing of figurative language has
ing memory as predictors. Inhibition and set shifting were consistently been linked to fronto-temporal and fronto-
not included as predictors because they were not related subcortical circuits (see e.g., Lauro, Tettamanti, Cappa,
linearly to the dependent variable, and one of the precon- & Papagno, 2007). Binder, Westbury, McKiernan, Pos-
ditions for regression analyses was thus not met. Analyses sing, and Medler (2005) reported an activation of the left
yielded significant effects for both working memory lateral temporal lobe while reading abstract and concrete
words. Relative to the concrete word condition, abstract
words were associated with activation of left inferior
Table 4
Results for the correlational analyses controlling for age and education
frontal regions. In addition, Rapp et al. (2004) found sig-
nal changes of the lateral inferior frontal, inferior tempo-
Corr Am Cmf Cml
ral and posterior middle/inferior temporal gyri during
WM r = .28* r = .19 r = .23* r = .23* metaphor reading. The PFC has been reported to be dis-
INH r = .03 r = .02 r = .04 r = .01
proportionately affected during normal aging (Tisserand
INHce r = .17 r = .31 ** r = .002 r = .02
INHue r = .17 r = .31** r = .002 r = .02 & Jolles, 2003; West & Covell, 2001), and PFC age
SET r = .23* r = .01 r = .01 r = .15 changes may also underlie the proverb comprehension
Note. WM, working memory; INH, inhibition; INHcr, inhibition cor- deficits of older people in the current study. However,
rected errors; INHue; uncorrected errors; SET, set shifting; Corr, correct imaging studies are clearly desirable to further elucidate
interpretations; Am, abstract meaningless; Cmf, concretistic-meaningful; the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying proverb com-
Cml, concretistic-meaningless; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.0001. prehension changes in aging.
56 J. Uekermann et al. / Brain and Cognition 67 (2008) 51–57
With regard to mediating cognitive processes, general erb comprehension changes in aging are investigated by
intellectual abilities are not likely to produce the observed using a more ecologically valid type of task.
age effects in proverb comprehension, since older subjects
scored higher in an IQ screening than the two younger Acknowledgment
groups. Older subjects had enjoyed less years of education
than the younger groups, and regression analysis confirmed We thank Marie Hennecke for her contribution to the
the contribution of years of education to proverb compre- development of the proverbs test.
hension. However, age effects were still observed for the
overall correct scores and errors in terms of concretistic- References
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