Collabobrators
University of Agder
Department of Foreign Languages and Translation: Linda Wheeldon (Lead) and Allison Wetterlin
Department of Sport Science and Physical Education: Hilde Lohne Seiler and Sveinung Berntsen
University of Birmingham, UK
School of Psychology: Katrien Segaert (Lead)
School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences: Samuel Lucas
Summary
This project investigated the relative benefits of regular physical activity and bilingualism for the amelioration of cognitive decline in healthy ageing. We focused on language function, a core aspect of human cognition that has received surprisingly little attention in ageing research given its tremendous impact on well-being. Healthy older adults experience a decline in language function, which can be characterized by word finding difficulties, slower and more disfluent sentence production, and slower and less accurate sentence comprehension. We investigated two factors that might ameliorate such language problems (as well as ameliorate other forms of cognitive decline in healthy ageing): regular physical activity and bilingualism. Both have been shown to reduce the structural and functional brain decline associated with healthy ageing and to confer more resilient cognitive performance. Currently however, it has only been established that bilingualism and regular physical activity provide benefits for non-linguistic aspects of cognition, such as executive functioning, working memory and processing speed. Our aim was to extend knowledge to effects of exercise and bilingualism on language abilities in healthy ageing. Furthermore, ameliorating language decline might be even more crucial for bilinguals than monolinguals, as bilingualism, even in young adults, has measurable costs for linguistic processing.
The FAB project ran from 2020 to 2023 and was awarded 12 000 000 NOK through the FRIPRO funding scheme for independent projects. FRIPRO is a scheme under the supervision of the Research Council of Norway and aims to provide funding for basic, ground-breaking projects. The minister for research and higher education, Iselin Nybø, visited UiA to deliver the news of the allocation of funds from FRIPRO and images from the NRK broadcast can be seen below.
