Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial Cooperation Society · Oct 31, 2026
Cognitive-Linguistic Trajectories of Aging : Focusing on Pathological Aging, Normal Aging, and Super-aging
By Lee MS
It is necessary to elucidate the heterogeneity of the effects of aging by examining the cognitive-linguistic trajectories of aging groups cross-sectionally and longitudinally. This study aimed to identify the cognitive-linguistic trajectories of aging, focusing on pathological aging, normal aging, and super-aging groups. The participant groups consisted of 16 individuals aged 80 years or older with pathological aging who had been diagnosed with MCI, 19 with normal aging, and 17 with super-aging, and they participated in a total of 3 cognitive-linguistic assessments over 2 years. The main results were as follows. First, cross-sectional comparisons of the cognitive-linguistic profiles of the three groups revealed significant differences in basic and higher-order cognition and subjective and objective language at all three time points, and most pairwise differences were also significant. Second, differences across the three time points were significant in all cognitive-linguistic domains in the pathological aging group, whereas the super-aging group showed the exact opposite pattern. Third, the normal aging group showed significant differences across time points in basic and higher-order cognition and objective language, but not subjective language. This study confirmed the dynamics of cognitive-linguistic aging based on the diversity of the aging spectrum. It also provided a new perspective on resistance to aging based on positive deviance by creating an opportunity to use the cognitive-linguistic trajectories of super-aging in interventions for pathological and normal aging.