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- Ljungberg, Jessika K., et al.
(author)
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The effect of language skills on dementia in a Swedish longitudinal cohort
- 2016
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In: Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism. - : John Benjamins Publishing Company. - 1879-9264 .- 1879-9272. ; 6:1-2, s. 190-204
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Recent findings indicate that bilingualism delay the onset of dementia. Using data from the Betula longitudinal cohort study on memory, health and aging (www.betula.su.se) the issue of a possible protective effect of bilingualism was addressed. Monolingual (n = 736) and bilingual (n = 82) participants (= 60 years) without dementia at inclusion were followed for incident dementia over a time-period up to 10 years. In total, 112 participants developed dementia. Analyses were performed with Cox proportional hazards regression adjusted for age, sex, and presence/absence of the Apolipoprotein E (APOE) epsilon 4 allele, with dementia outcome as the dependent variable. Results showed no delayed onset of dementia in bilinguals compared to monolinguals. However, because of the findings from a study using participants from the same population showing beneficial longitudinal effects of bilingualism on episodic memory; we argue that our results may depend on the frequency of use of the second language after retirement.
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