Association between declarative memory and language ability in older Chinese by education level

Abstract

Episodic memory and semantic memory are two subsystems of declarative memory which is considered to be related to language ability. We investigated the interdependence of the episodic and semantic memory and their association with syntactic complexity in two groups of Chinese older adults with higher and lower education levels. The results indicate that episodic memory and semantic memory are significantly correlated with each other, but only episodic memory shows a significant relationship with syntactic complexity. Educational attainment has a substantial influence on the performance of memory tasks, but no influence on the syntactic complexity. The study provides new evidence from Chinese older adults for clarifying the association between declarative memory and syntactic processing and the benefits from education on memory preservation in later life.