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How does multilingual language engagement influence behavioral performance and N200/P300 characteristics in middle-aged adults with and without a familial risk for Alzheimer’s Disease?
Poster Session E, Friday, October 2, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm, Wangari Maathai
Janine Rook1, Vincent DeLuca2, Greg Poarch1, Merel Keijzer1; 1University of Groningen, 2Universitetet i Tromsø The Arctic University of Norway
It is estimated that the number of people suffering from dementia will have tripled by 2050 (Alzheimer’s Disease International, 2018). Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia and several risk factors for AD have been identified, such as increasing age and having family members with AD. Various lifestyle factors have been found to improve the brain’s resilience against age-related cognitive decline, such as engaging in physical and cognitively-stimulating activities (Safiri et al., 2024). Multilingualism has been suggested to be such a cognitively-stimulating lifestyle factor: studies have shown a later onset of AD symptoms in bilinguals compared to monolinguals and an enhanced cognitive performance in older bilinguals relative to matched monolingual comparison groups (Anderson et al., 2020; Bialystok, 2017). Much of how multilingualism affects cognitive aging remains poorly understood. This study addresses how multilingualism as a cognitively-stimulating lifestyle factor affects neurocognition in middle adulthood and how multilingualism interacts with fixed familial predispositions for AD. We specifically investigate how the degree of multilingual language engagement affects neurocognition to further explore what aspect(s) of the multilingual experience induce neurocognitive changes. We explore both behavioral outcomes and neurophysiological markers, which can inform us about the mechanisms underlying cognitive behaviors. We are particularly interested in the event-related potentials N200 and P300, as they have been found to be modulated by multilingualism as well as by AD risk (Ally et al., 2006; Cespón & Carreiras, 2020). Our study focuses on middle adulthood, as AD pathophysiology starts years before symptom onset, providing a potential window for lifestyle interventions (Sperling et al., 2011). The present project investigates how degree of multilingual language engagement affects reaction times (RTs), N200/P300 amplitudes and N200/P300 latencies during a Stroop-Arrows task in cognitively-healthy middle-aged adults (45-65 years-old) who either do or do not have first-degree family members with AD. We examine both the direct effect of multilingual language engagement and its interaction with AD family history on neurocognition. We predict that greater degree of multilingual engagement is associated with a better behavioral performance (i.e., smaller Stroop effect) (Freeman et al., 2022), smaller N200 and larger P300 amplitudes, and with shorter N200/P300 latencies (Cespón & Carreiras, 2020; Grundy et al., 2017). We expect longer P300 latencies and smaller P300 amplitudes without RT differences in people with first-degree family members with AD (Ally et al., 2006). In the ongoing analysis, we include RT data from 95 participants, 62 of whom additionally provided EEG data. Although preliminary analyses indicated little correlation between degree of multilingual engagement, AD family history and RTs or N200/P300 latencies in this cohort, we will present the further analysis at SNL that includes amplitude measurements. Taken together, this study informs cognitive aging theories on how cognitively-stimulating lifestyle factors affect neurocognition and interact with fixed genetic factors in an age group that just precedes older age. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate multilingual language engagement and its interaction with family history of AD.
Topic Areas: Multilingualism, Control, Selection, and Executive Processes