Exploring the Effect of Languaging Activities on Cognitive Functioning: The Case of an Older Adult in a Long-Term Care Facility
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract In this article we argue that language functions as more than just a form of communication; it functions as a cognitive tool as well. The use of language to mediate complex cognitive functioning such as problem solving, attending, and recalling has been referred to as languaging. We demonstrate that languaging is associated with enhanced cognitive functioning in Agnes, a 94-year-old resident of a long-term care facility. The enhanced cognitive functioning was reflected in an increase in discourse builders and a decrease in discourse impairments over a 2-month period during which Agnes engaged in languaging activities. We suggest that volunteers could be trained to implement languaging activities, which take more time to implement than many staff members have. Keywords: languagingcognitiondiscourseolder adultslong-term care facilities Acknowledgments This research was made possible by a grant to Merrill Swain and Sharon Lapkin from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (No. 410-04-2099). We are grateful to the participant and staff of the long-term care facility for their collaboration. We also wish to acknowledge, with thanks, feedback on earlier drafts of this article from Iryna Lenchuk, Kyoko Motobayashi, and Paula Psyllakis. Notes 1. Only a small percentage of these individuals progress to becoming Alzheimer's patients. 2. Studies illustrating the mediating role of languaging exist in fields such as applied linguistics (e.g., CitationBrooks, Swain, Lapkin, & Knouzi, 2010). A similar construct to languaging is found in such disciplines as biology under the label of "self-explanation" (e.g., CitationChi, Leeuw, Chiu, & Lavancher, 1994). 3. Pseudonyms are used for the facility and research participants. 4. The numbers in parentheses after excerpts from the data indicate the session number and turn number. For example, 1.212 is session 1, turn 212. 5. Percentages are rounded to whole numbers.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it