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In July 2019, Belo Horizonte hosted an international workshop for 27 junior researchers, whose participants were from Brazil and the United Kingdom. This three-day meeting organized by the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and the University of East Anglia addressed challenges in cognitive impairment and dementia, with particular interest in public perceptions, diagnosis and care management. The purpose of this report is to highlight the outcomes of the above-mentioned workshop regarding the topic of public perceptions (part I). Discussions focused on differences and similarities between countries, as well as on identifying main issues that required collaborative and creative solutions. After these group discussions, four core themes emerged: I) cognitive impairment; II) dementia - beyond Alzheimer's disease; III) prevention; and IV) stigma. National and international initiatives to deal with public misperceptions about cognitive impairment and dementia were discussed., Competing Interests: Disclosure: The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Conversational discourse (CD) is among the most complex tasks in everyday life and relies on multiple cognitive domains (communicative and executive abilities). Alterations in discourse comprehension and production are often present in pathological aging. However, there is still a need to identify changes in healthy aging., Objective: This study aimed to compare young and older adults for the frequency of impaired communicative behaviors on a CD task. Performance was scored according to the Complementary Procedure of Conversational Discourse Analysis (CPCDA), developed based on the CD task from the Montreal Communication Evaluation Battery., Methods: A total of 95 participants (54 young-adults and 41 older adults) were evaluated. The frequency of communicative behaviors was compared between groups using MANCOVA and Chi-square tests., Results: Young adults showed fewer impairments in expression, pragmatics, cohesion, coherence, comprehension and emotional prosody. Older adults showed higher levels of verbal initiative and had fewer word finding difficulties. Communicative behaviors associated with planning and self-monitoring (e.g. repetition of information and syllabic false starts) appear to be common in the speech of healthy individuals in general., Conclusion: Studies which evaluate both discursive and cognitive skills are required to identify age-related changes. This would allow for the development of screening tools for CD assessment and preventive programs., Competing Interests: Disclosure: The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Lexical-semantic impairments are common consequences of acquired neurological damage. However, little is known about the benefits of existing treatment methods for this type of language impairment., Objective: To evaluate current research into lexical-semantic interventions for adults with dementia, TBI or stroke., Methods: The PubMed, PsycInfo and SCOPUS databases were searched for studies related to rehabilitation, neurological conditions, communicative and lexical-semantic skills published between 2004 and 2014., Results: Twenty-eight of the 453 abstracts found were selected for the review based on the PRISMA method. Most of the studies described treatments for anomia. Semantic tasks were the most commonly used, followed by phonological and gestural strategies. Interventions were individual and involved formal tasks, although the number, frequency and duration of sessions varied between studies., Conclusion: Although lexical-semantic interventions lead to improvements in language abilities, they are still poorly described in the literature, and must be further investigated in terms of their efficacy, effectiveness and long-term effects., Competing Interests: Disclosure: The authors report no conflicts of interest.

The objective of this paper was to describe the evolution of language assessments in patients with acquired neurological diseases over a period of around 45 years from 1970, when interdisciplinarity in Neuropsychology first began in Brazil, to the present day. The first twenty years of data was based on memories of Speech Pathology University Professors who were in charge of teaching aphasia. We then show the contributions of Linguistics, Cognitive Psychology, as well as Psycholinguistic and Psychometric criteria, to language evaluation. Finally, the current panorama of adaptations and creations of validated and standardized instruments is given, based on a search of the databases Pubmed, Scopus and Lilacs. Our closing remarks highlight the diversity in evaluation approaches and the recent tendency of language evaluations linked to new technologies such as brain imaging and computational analysis., Competing Interests: Disclosure: The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Objective: To assess the predictive role of education and frequency of reading and writing habits (FRWH) on the cognitive flexibility, inhibition and planning abilities of healthy elderly individuals., Methods: Fifty-seven healthy adults aged between 60 and 75 years with 2 to 23 years of formal education were assessed as to the frequency with which they read and wrote different types of text, as well as their number of years of formal education. Executive functions were evaluated using the Hayling Test and the Modified Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (MWCST)., Results: Weak to moderate positive correlations were found between education, FRWH and the number of categories completed in the MWCST, while negative correlations were identified between these variables and the number of perseverative and non-perseverative errors on the task. Only the FRWH was significantly correlated with the number of failures to maintain set. Speed and accuracy on the Hayling Test were only correlated with participant education. Both education and FRWH significantly predicted performance on the MWCST, and the combination of these two variables had a greater predictive impact on performance on this task than either of the two variables alone. Variability in scores on the Hayling Test was best accounted for by participant education., Conclusion: In this sample of elderly subjects, cognitive flexibility was sufficiently preserved to allow for adequate performance on verbal tasks, but may have benefitted from the additional stimulation provided by regular reading and writing habits and by formal education in the performance of more complex non-verbal tasks., Competing Interests: Disclosure: The authors report no conflicts of interest.