Balance and Trend Analysis of Present, Past and Future tenses in Conversation among Healthy Older Adults

Abstract

The increase of dementia patients is one of the problems caused by aged population in Japan. This study analyses balance and trend in use of present, past and future tenses in conversation among old- er adults in order to investigate the relationship in mental time travel of the speaker and symptom of cog- nitive decline and dementia. The ability to travel mental time has been evolved in humans in particular, and can be observed in grammatical structure of the sentences, especially as a tense. Therefore, there was a correlation to mental time and use of tense in conversation. The results suggest that healthy older adult tends to use present tense frequently.