Losing her Marples

[thebitterguy]

I posted this to doc_mystery because it seemed to be right up his alley, but I figured it would be of interest to the rest of the peeps out there.

A pair of professors from the U of T are investigating Agatha Christie's novels to see if there is any evidence in them of Alzheimers. They feel that evidence of advancing Alzheimers will be visible in textual analysis before other signs.

Turning to indefinite nouns is common as one ages, says Lancashire, as specific words become harder to reach. Severe vocabulary decline, however, indicates cognitive degeneration: “It suggests there’s a problem in retrieval from long-term memory.” More will be gleaned when the results from more complex analysis of Christie’s work are available in the late summer.

To contextualize the findings, they’ll also need a baseline study of an author who didn’t suffer from dementia to deduce how language changes with normal aging, says Lancashire. He believes a similar screen of the work of H.G. Wells, who had a long, prolific career without any indication of cognitive impairment, could provide that.

Whether textual analysis will ever become a routine diagnostic tool is a question mark. A decline in written skills can be a significant early marker of Alzheimer’s, says Morris Freedman, the head of neurology at Baycrest. “Because writing is a learned, not a natural skill, it breaks down early,” he says. But he’s skeptical such ambitious analysis is practical: “You’d have to have large samples over time,” he says.

Via james_nicoll.

Comments

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

This is a very interesting article. It also ignores the fact that in Christie's later life she didn't literally write her detective novels; she dictated them to a secretary/transcriptionist.

The changes in lexical fluency seen by others in her early novels versus her later ones may simply reflect that writers chose different words when they create text via typing, as opposed to spoken words she dictated to others.

::B::

[thebitterguy]

I was going to add that to the body of the piece, actually. Would that be cool?

And isn't that an awesome title?

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

Well, if you replace "chose" with "choose".

And that pun is what my daughter's 5 year old friend would call a "groaner".

::B:

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, you misspelled 'Christie' in your posting above.

Lets hope that the above U of T researchers are incorrect...

::B::

[vampyrehunterm.livejournal.com]

They also don't seem to be taking into account that she wrote over 80 novels over the course of several decades. One thing I've noticed, is that her writing reflected the time period in which the novel was written. Her novels from the 1920s and 30s were slightly different than the novels she wrote in the 60s as language changed with the times. It would make sense that she wouldn't be expressing things in writing during the 60s the same way that she did in the 30s.

One would think that after writing so much for so long, that there would be slight changes in writing style and use of language, that it wouldn't remain static, given that language in general changes over time. Words also change their meanings. Words from the 80s didn't have the same context as they do today. There are certainly things that would have been said in the 20s and 30s that would not have been said, or said the same way in the 70s.

[deven-science.livejournal.com]

Style and word usage changes over time, so I'm not sure if this study could go anywhere.

Isaac Asimov's later Foundation novels had a completely different voice then his first three, and he was healthy to the end, so far as I know.

Still, if they can account for that somehow, it could be an interesting study.

Oh, and I'm assuming the "U of T" is University of Toronto?