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Article published In:
Bi-/Multilingualism and the Declining Brain
Edited by Christos Pliatsikas, Ana Inés Ansaldo and Toms Voits
[Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 11:4] 2021
► pp. 484–504

Interpreting cognitive decline in the face of cognitive reserve

Does bilingualism affect cognitive aging?

| Department of Psychology, York University
| Department of Psychology, York University
| Department of Psychology, York University | Department of Psychology, Iowa State University

Evaluation of the cognitive level of older adults, including decisions about meeting clinical thresholds for dementia, is typically based on behavioral levels of performance. However, individuals with high cognitive reserve will outperform the levels typically associated with their brain structure, providing inaccurate assessments of their status. We define cognitive reserve as the relation between brain integrity and cognitive level, and use the case of bilingualism as a source of cognitive reserve to illustrate how information from only one can distort the interpretation of the individual’s cognitive status.

Keywords: cognitive reserve, aging, brain integrity
Article outline
  • Defining and identifying cognitive reserve
  • Does bilingualism confer cognitive reserve?
  • Relation between age, brain structure and cognitive level
  • Determining cognitive reserve from behavioral data
  • Evidence for reserve from brain data
  • Combining brain and behavioral data
  • Retrospective and prospective studies of dementia
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 3 September 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.18040.bia
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