The Quality of Recalling Semantic Units: A Phenomenon of Dementia

This article discusses the ability of elderly people to recall various semantic units of their own language. Thirty people were selected to become the subjects of the research. The survey was designed to collect the data related to their personal identities. An interview with each of the subjects was performed, testing their ability to recall semantic units such as words related to their personal information, major Indonesian historical events, times and numbers, and objects/things in their surrounding environment. The results suggest that each of the elderly people shows a different level of performance in recalling semantic units within their language. Words representing the names of things/objects in the surrounding environment were the units which were recalled most easily by the subjects, whereas the hardest units to remember were expressions related to major Indonesian historical events. This phenomenon suggests that some of them are beginning to suffer from dementia.