Age-related differences in conversational discourse abilities A comparative study

Abstract

ABSTRACT. 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.

A cross-sectional study to assess pragmatic strengths and weaknesses in healthy ageing

“…This outcome is in line with the result obtained by Daniluk and Borkowska [ 17 ] but in contrast with other studies where an age-related decline was detected [ 88 , 89 ]. In a study by Pereira and collaborators [ 90 ], the conversational discourse of a group of older individuals (70 years old) was transcribed, analysed and compared to the transcription of conversational samples of a group of young adults (27 years old). The results highlighted the difficulty of older adults to respect turn taking, to maintain the topic of the conversation and to return to the original topic after a thematic shift.…”

Exploring age-related changes in inter-brain synchrony during verbal communication

“…The more coherent a discourse, the more that the speaker is maintaining a theme of conversation and the more likely that the listener will be able to understand the meaning intended by the speaker. Although younger and older adults are remarkably similar in a variety of conversational discourse abilities (Pereira et al, 2019), older adults have been found to produce less globally coherent discourse, especially when recounting personal experiences (Pereira et al, 2019;Wright et al, 2014). If the speech of older adults includes more tangential asides and is less globally coherent, it may be more difficult for a listener to actively predict upcoming information in the discourse.…”

Avaliação Da Produção Discursiva Oral No Envelhecimento E Sua Relação Com Escolaridade E Hábitos De Leitura E Escrita: Uma Revisão Sistemática

“…Dos 19 artigos que compõem esta revisão, seis deles investigaram o efeito da escolaridade (JERÔNIMO, 2018;MACKENZIE et al, 2007;ZANINI et al, 2005;MACKENZIE, 2000;DORZE;BÈDARD, 1998;JUNCOS-RABADÀN, 1996); o restante dos artigos não incluiu tal variável em seus experimentos; nenhum estudo investigou o efeito dos hábitos de leitura e escrita. É interessante salientar que dois estudos utilizaram amostras de populações brasileiras (PEREIRA et al, 2019;JERÔNIMO, 2018). Do total de artigos selecionados, 18 foram publicados em inglês e um em português.…”

“…Todos os artigos apresentaram uma abordagem quantitativa, sendo os objetivos, em geral, bastante heterogêneos. Alguns estudos focalizaram aspectos microestruturais do discurso (CAPILOUTO; WRIGHT; MADDY, 2016), como coerência local e informatividade (JUNCOS-RABADÁN; PEREIRO; RODRÍGUEZ, 2005), diversidade lexical e conteúdo léxico-semântico (DORZE; BÉDARD, 1998) e coesão (SHERRATT; BRYAN, 2019; BABAEI; GHAYOUMI--ANARAKI; MAHMOODI-BAKHTIARI, 2019; SALING; LAROO; SALING, 2012) etc., enquanto outros focalizaram aspectos macroestruturais, como coerência global e suas relações com processos cognitivos (PISTONO et al, 2017;CANNIZZARO;COELHO, 2013;WHITWORTH et al, 2015;CAPILOUTO, 2009;JAMES et al, 1998), ou, ainda, ambas as dimensões discursivas (macro e microestruturais) (PEREIRA et al, 2019;MARINI et al, 2005;JUNCOS-RABADÁN, 1996;GLOSSER;DESER, 1992).…”

“…Tarefas com base em eventos autobiográficos ou conversações podem focalizar tópicos genéricos a respeito da família e de experiências profissionais, bem como episódios engraçados ou assustadores que o participante tenha vivenciado. Em função disso, são bastante eficientes como testes ecológicos e naturalistas (PEREIRA et al, 2019); no entanto, tendem a dificultar a análise dos resultados, dada a grande heterogeneidade discursiva que proporcionam (JERÔNIMO; HÜBNER, 2014). Evidências apontam que os efeitos do envelhecimento tendem a ser mais aparentes em tarefas com base em eventos autobiográficos ou conversações do que em tarefas baseadas em figuras, uma vez que as primeiras são mais dependentes de processos cognitivos, como atenção e memória (SHERRAT; BRYAN, 2019;CANNIZZARO;COELHO, 2013;MACKENZIE, 2000), podendo, assim, aumentar a probabilidade de a narrativa do adulto idoso se afastar do tópico central (WRIGHT et al, 2014;JAMES et al, 1998).…”