Sounds of Healthy Aging: Cognitive activities of older adults in the real world

I am a lifespan developmental psychologist, who examines cognitive activities such as memory and learning across the adult lifespan in relation to well-being. At the core of my research, I develop and use real-life methods (e.g., wearables) and interdisciplinary approaches in data analytics (e.g., machine learning).

In this talk, I will focus on one such real-life methodology, the Electronically Activated Recorder, an app that periodically records snippets of ambient sounds and speech, capturing users’ lives. My team and I code and analyze the audio and speech data to extract psychological information about older adults’ contexts, as well as cognitive activities in real life, such as

• conversational time travel (e.g., reminiscing about the past)
• informal learning (e.g., lady showing her husband how to use a new app on his phone)
• language use (vocabulary richness, grammatical complexity, word choice)

I will provide an overview of this method, as well as a glimpse into some of our findings on older adults’ cognitive activities in everyday life.

Click here to participate online.

Dr. Burcu Demiray is a lifespan developmental psychologist and a research group leader focusing on cognitive activities and psychological well-being across adulthood