As part of the study, they analyzed essays that the nuns wrote when they were in their early 20s, and found that nuns who didn't get Alzheimer's had higher idea density in their essays, and nuns who did get Alzheimer's had lower idea density.
An example of a sentence with high idea density, taken from this article:
"After I finished the eighth grade in 1921 I desired to become an aspirant at Mankato but I myself did not have the courage to ask the permission of my parents so Sister Agreda did it in my stead and they readily gave their consent."
An example of a sentence with low idea density:
"After I left school, I worked in the post-office."
Interpretations of this finding tend to view high idea density as equivalent to better language skills. But when I read about this, my first thought was that some nuns may have been able to write a more idea-dense essay, but chose not to. They may have thought a simpler style more appropriate to the purpose of this essay. They may not have enormous colour to add to this one particular subject. Maybe they didn't have as much time as they would have liked. Maybe the pen they were using was uncomfortable to write with. It's possible that their writing style may even have matured away from frills - I know when I was younger, I went through a phase of writing ridiculously (yes, even more ridiculously than now) in an attempt to emulate of the Victorian authors I was reading at the time.
Even if we accept the assumption that high idea density equals better language skills (I'm reminded of the much-attributed "Please excuse the long letter, I didn't have time to write a short one."), we have no way of knowing how many of the subjects had higher linguistic ability but chose not to use it to its fullest extent for that particular essay. What if the true predictor of Alzheimer's is instead whatever process leads the subject to assess that particular essay assignment as more conducive to a simpler writing style?
It would also be interesting to see if the idea density correlation persists over generations. The various examples of high idea-density sentences I've read seem old-fashioned to me (probably reflecting the fact that the nuns wrote them in the first half of the 20th century), while the low idea-density sentences seemed more timeless.
Actually, it might also be a function of the specific education the subject received. Someone being trained in writing today would be guided away from certain stylistic elements in the high idea density example given above (although not necessarily from idea density itself), and these elements seemed fairly common in the various examples of high idea density sentences I've read from this study.
It would also be interesting to see if the idea density pattern holds up in other languages. In my French writing classes, I was nudged towards a higher idea density than I'd land on naturally, although I never find myself wishing for lower idea density as I translate French to English. Other languages might gravitate to lower or higher density for syntactic or cultural reasons, which might change the correlations with Alzheimer's.
3 comments:
I know when I was younger, I went through a phase of writing ridiculously (yes, even more ridiculously than now) in an attempt to emulate of the Victorian authors I was reading at the time.
Me too! I did that when I was around 15. Then much later, I had an email friend with whom I would do that. We would write portions of our emails in pseudo-Dickens or pseudo-Austen.
Do you know if there were other criteria for this idea density assessment? Was it mostly based on the sentence structures of essays?
One of the books I read as a kid that had flowery language was Helen Keller's autobiography. And I think she was fairly young when she wrote it. It just occurred to me that maybe that wasn't how people normally talked then, and instead she was just going through her own flowery writing phase!
On-topic, I haven't fully read the original scientific papers (I got on this idea from something I read in a book), but my understanding is that they weren't originally looking for idea density, they were just looking at these essays the nuns wrote when they were novices and looking for patterns and correlations. And sentence density is what they found. I haven't seen anything about sentence density in other writings throughout their life, but I haven't read everything that was written on this.
The value of the nun study compared with more conventional studies is that their regimented and monastic lifestyle automatically controls for a lot of variables, and the value of these essays is that they were written in the same context and the same conditions, with the nuns having no idea whatsoever that these essays might be analyzed for science (because the study didn't come along for decades). I don't know if they have other writings produced throughout their career that are similarly scientifically useful.
Interesting, thanks. Plus you've reminded me that I wanted to read Helen Keller's autobiography, also Margaret Sanger's.
Margaret Sanger is unrelated to this post. An assocation through autobiography of long-ago great woman.
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