Quote:
Originally Posted by bsloan1960
I'm 65. I have always had, and used a pretty expansive vocabulary- not scholarly but enough to be sure I was understood. I could hold my own in a variety of social situations.
For the past few years I have a lot of trouble finding words. I find that my conversations are now lacking the 'big' words I used to use. When I'm talking, a word that would normally be immediately available to me is now a blank space in my mind, and I instead use a basic word. An example: While talking I might use the 'Expansive" (as in my 1st sentence above), but when I draw a blank I'll instead say, "Big". This problem is not quite so bad when I'm typing.
So, are these lapses on the spectrum Senior Moments?
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Where was I? This is a very common problem with age, and it isn’t necessarily dementia. For the last ten years I spent teaching literature on the college level, I had a hard time occasionally remembering the names of characters in books I was teaching when I needed their names. I used to write the names on a post-it note I kept inside the front cover. I think that if you can explain the context where a word is used, give synonyms, define it aloud, then recognize the word when it comes to you later, you are doing okay.
I may have problems remembering a certain word I need at times, but I read scholarly books, have high-level conversations, write and publish books. I learn to play new musical instruments and learn new techniques for playing old ones and learn new songs. I like to think those things help keep my mind sharper than it might otherwise be. It’s definitely harder to memorize new songs these days, but I’m still learning and loving it.