• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.280-292
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• 2012

Cognitive-pragmatic language ability decreases during the normal aging process. Evaluating the ability might be useful in testing predicting cognitive level and diseases such as dementia. The aim of this study is to analyze various assessment protocols for normal aging, and evaluate the content validity of the currently developing cognitive-pragmatic language test domains and items. Content Validity Index(CVI) was calculated based on ratings judged by 17 experts including speech-language pathologists and clinical psychologists. As a result, it was found that CVIs of all 7 domains including attention, memory, organization, reasoning, problem solving, executive function, pragmatic language were above .75. It was concluded that the test items contained the appropriate content validity to assess cognitive-pragmatic language for normal aging.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2017.05a
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• pp.718-721
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• 2017

Natural language processing, which is the basis of text mining, differs depending on the type of language. Especially, Hangeul, which has relatively high freedom of expression compared to other languages, has various forms of words depending on the use of ending. The part that does not change in these various forms of words is called the stem. For effective text mining, it is essential to extract words and unify various types of words. Therefore, this paper proposes an extraction algorithm for Hangul word for effective text mining of Hangul document.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.11
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• pp.359-373
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• 2015

Cognitive reserve(CR) is the ability to optimize or maximize performance through complementary brain networks. CR is relevant to normal aging in cognitive-linguistic abilities. There are few domestic systematic reviews or meta-analyses that analyze the relationships between multiple CR and cognitive-linguistic domains in healthy older people. This meta-analysis included 32 studies published since 2000. In result, education level topped the list, followed by the occupation, cognitively stimulating activities, and the multilingualism. Most studies were related to memory, global cognition, and language. CR had a modest positive association with cognitive-linguistic performance. Multiple domains including memory and language also showed the significant correlations across most measures of CR. This study provides evidence-based information to support cognitive-linguistic ability in normal aging.

• 한국노년학
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.981-1001
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• 2016

At old age, as people depend on superficial clues when they interpret the overall context of communication, their ability to understand connotative and figurative words and articles could deteriorate. In this study, 50 normal young(junior) people and normal old(senior) people were made to perform a task to understand similes, metaphors, idioms, and proverbs, the sub-areas of figurative language. For the task, participants were made to understand a paragraph consisting of several sentences and select a correct answer representing appropriate figurative language. As a result of the analysis, first, old people showed a lower level of performance than young people in all the sub-areas of figurative language. Second, in understanding idiomatic words and proverbs, old people showed a lower level of performance due to unfamiliarity. Third, for the types of wrong answers, old people mostly understood only the literal meanings in all the sub-areas of figurative language. Due to aging, old people come to have a lowered level of the pragmatic language ability, reasoning ability, and inhibiting ability to efficiently communicate with others considering certain situations and contexts. Thus, old people could have difficulties in understanding inner meanings from others in daily communication.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.111-132
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• 2013

Previous research has shown that aging asymmetrically affects various functions in language. It is known that older adults show deficits in language production compared to young adults, while the performance in semantic processing is similar between older and young adults. The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon effectively reflects failure in retrieval of phonological knowledge. Older adults report TOTs more often than young adults and the cause of this phenomenon has been explained by two frameworks: the 'blocking hypothesis' and 'transmission deficit hypothesis'. This study examines the effect of aging on the retrival of phonological knowledge by inducing TOTs in the laboratory. Two variables were manipulated: age and word category. Participants were young and older adults, and stimuli was selected from 5 categories of words. After the participants read a definition about a target word, they reported three conditions: 'know', 'don't know', 'TOT'. The results were as follows: First, the older adults reported TOTs more often than the young adults. Second, TOTs occurred more in proper nouns such as names of persons and places. Third, in the category that TOTs occurred more often, there was a bigger age difference. Fourth, older adults reported fewer alternative words during TOT than young adults. Fifth, participants tended to report the partial information during TOT in characters. These results show the age-related difficulty in the retrieval of phonological knowledge in Korean. It is explained by the transmission deficit hypothesis and the characteristics of Korean orthography and phonology.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.127-130
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to examine the difference in acoustic features between Young Voices and Aged Voices, which are actually come from the same age group. The 12 female subjects in their thirties were participated and recorded their sustained vowel /a/, connected speech, and reading. Their voices were divided into Younger Voices and Aged Voices, which means voices sound like younger person and sound like in their age or more aged ones. Praat 4.4.22 was used to record and analyze their acoustic features like Fo, SFF, Jitter, Shimmer, HNR, Pitch-range. And the six female listeners guessed the subjects' age and judged whether they sound younger or as like their actual age. We used the Independent t-Test to find the significant difference between those two groups' acoustic features. The result shows a significant difference in Fo, SFF. The above and the previous studies tell us the group who sounds like younger or baby like voice has the similar acoustic features of actually young people.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.35
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• pp.315-338
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to propose actual operation condition of Japanese lecture based on social welfare organizations located in Seoul to investigate the current status and problems of Japanese language education in terms of lifelong education. According to the result of this study, the remarkable point was that a majority of Japanese lecture courses are highly focused on the elderly and 86% of the welfare organizations are providing free education. Regarding the effect of specialized business for the aged run by social welfare community center, it says, as Korea changing to aging society at the beginning of 21st century, it has put focus on strengthening personal competences of seniors through opportunities for participation in lifelong education, recreational activity programs and culture classes. It means foreign language classes are operating as one of the lifelong education programs for reinforcement of individual capability. Considering this tendency, it is expected that the lifelong education participation rate of the elder in Seoul will be raised. So, systematic improvements will be needed for this. First, it is required to recognize the existence of Educational and Cultural Industry and work hard to make it public so it could be invigorated and utilized by people usefully at the same time. Second, Japanese language training that mostly 55-year-old or more than 60-year-old people receive at the welfare center needs to be systematized for preparations on proper studying environment which provides the older with appropriate education method and content as well. Third, stable and systematic operation should be available through the link with experts in the field of Japanese language education and elderly education. Fourth, education program development is needed, which is able to satisfy one's desires for learning. Hence, targeting Japanese learners at each welfare center, we need to know the estimation of satisfaction degree and consciousness on learning Japanese. Finally, it has not been studied sufficiently regarding the instructors on teaching Japanese language in this paper, but it has been reported that most of social welfare centers, where Japanese language lectures are provided, are run by volunteers who can teach Japanese. Thus, the study on actual condition for Japanese language instructors will be conducted as well later on.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.283-289
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• 2019

Brain aging induces neuropsychological changes, such as decreased memory capacity, language ability, and attention; and is also associated with neurodegenerative diseases. However, most of the studies on brain aging are focused on neurons, while senescence in astrocytes has received less attention. Astrocytes constitute the majority of cell types in the brain and perform various functions in the brain such as supporting brain structures, regulating blood-brain barrier permeability, transmitter uptake and regulation, and immunity modulation. Recent studies have shown that SIRT1 and SIRT2 play certain roles in cellular senescence in peripheral systems. Both SIRT1 and SIRT2 inhibitors delay tumor growth in vivo without significant general toxicity. In this study, we investigated the role of tenovin-1, an inhibitor of SIRT1 and SIRT2, on rat primary astrocytes where we observed senescence and other functional changes. Cellular senescence usually is characterized by irreversible cell cycle arrest and induces senescence- associated ${\beta}$-galactosidase (SA-${\beta}$-gal) activity. Tenovin-1-treated astrocytes showed increased SA-${\beta}$-gal-positive cell number, senescence-associated secretory phenotypes, including IL-6 and IL-$1{\beta}$, and cell cycle-related proteins like phospho-histone H3 and CDK2. Along with the molecular changes, tenovin-1 impaired the wound-healing activity of cultured primary astrocytes. These data suggest that tenovin-1 can induce cellular senescence in astrocytes possibly by inhibiting SIRT1 and SIRT2, which may play particular roles in brain aging and neurodegenerative conditions.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.11
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• pp.527-539
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• 2018

Cognitive decline in aging is known to yield detrimental effects in syntactic processing and working memory capacity is the most crucial cognitive function in understanding older adults' sentence processing skills. This study examined how young and older adults utilize contextual information while resolving NP-attached Ps vis word-by-word self-paced reading paradigm. In addition, the study asked which cognitive functions play roles on the use of a NP-supporting context during processing of NP-attached PP. When NP-attached PP was presented in a supporting context, both age groups performed faster than in the null context condition. Among different cognitive functions, alternating attention skills were correlated with the ability utilizing context during syntactic ambiguity resolution and working memory capacity was not found to be crucial for this study. In conclusion, this study suggests that aging does not always affect older adults' syntactic processing negatively and relevant cognitive function may vary depending on the type of syntactic structure.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.9 no.10
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• pp.243-248
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• 2018

The social activities of the elderly are important in successfully achieving aging by providing opportunities for social interaction to enhance life satisfaction. The purpose of this study is to identify the related factors of the elderly social activities and build a statistical classification model to predict social activities. Subjects were 1,864 elderly people (829 males, 1,035 females) who completed the community health survey in 2015. Outcome variables were defined as the experience of social activity during the past month(yes, no). The prediction model was constructed using decision tree model based on Classification and Regression Trees (CRT) algorithm. The results of this study were subjective health, frequency of meeting with neighbors, frequency of meeting with relatives, and living with spouse were significant variables of social participation. The most prevalent predictor was the subjective health level. In order to prepare for the successful aging of the super aged society based on the results of this study, social attention and support for the social activities of the elderly are required.