Language comprehension in aging

DeDe, Gayle; Knilans, Jessica

doi:10.1075/z.200.05ded

Cited by 17 publications

(37 citation statements)

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“…In another study, DeCaro et al ( 2016 ) found that age did not significantly improve the prediction of comprehension accuracy when working memory capacity and hearing acuity were already present in the model. There are multiple candidate variables that may be related to successful language processing in older adults, including perceptual abilities which decline with age, such as hearing acuity (DeDe and Flax, 2016 ) and temporal processing abilities (Pichora-Fuller, 2003 ) in the case of spoken language. Other candidate mechanisms include cognitive abilities like processing speed (Salthouse, 1996 ), working memory (Payne et al, 2014 ; DeDe and Flax, 2016 ), inhibitory processes (Hasher and Zacks, 1988 ), and verbal fluency, which is thought to moderate the extent to which older adults use predictive processing (Federmeier et al, 2002 ; DeLong et al, 2012 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, we chose peripheral hearing loss as measured by hearing thresholds. Hearing loss is highly prevalent in older adults—approximately 20% at age 60 and 50% at age 70 (Goman and Lin, 2016 ; Bisgaard and Ruf, 2017 ; Mick et al, 2019 )—and hearing thresholds have been shown to influence many behavioral results in previous studies (Wingfield et al, 2006 ; DeCaro et al, 2016 ; DeDe and Flax, 2016 ), even in young adults (Ayasse et al, 2019 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Individual Differences in Peripheral Hearing and Cognition Reveal Sentence Processing Differences in Healthy Older Adults

2020

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When viewed cross-sectionally, aging seems to negatively affect speech comprehension. However, aging is a heterogeneous process, and variability among older adults is typically large. In this study, we investigated language comprehension as a function of individual differences in older adults. Specifically, we tested whether hearing thresholds, working memory, inhibition, and individual alpha frequency would predict event-related potential amplitudes in response to classic psycholinguistic manipulations at the sentence level. Twenty-nine healthy older adults (age range 61–76 years) listened to English sentences containing reduced relative clauses and object-relative clauses while their electroencephalogram was recorded. We found that hearing thresholds and working memory predicted P600 amplitudes early during reduced relative clause processing, while individual alpha frequency predicted P600 amplitudes at a later point in time. The results suggest that participants with better hearing and larger working memory capacity simultaneously activated both the preferred and the dispreferred interpretation of reduced relative clauses, while participants with worse hearing and smaller working memory capacity only activated the preferred interpretation. They also suggest that participants with a higher individual alpha frequency had a higher likelihood of successfully reanalysing the sentence toward the reduced relative clause reading than participants with a lower individual alpha frequency. By contrast, we found no relationship between object-relative clause processing and working memory or hearing thresholds. Taken together, the results support the view that older adults employ different strategies during auditory sentence processing dependent on their hearing and cognitive abilities and that there is no single ability that uniformly predicts sentence processing outcomes.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual Differences in Peripheral Hearing and Cognition Reveal Sentence Processing Differences in Healthy Older Adults

2020

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“…Despite these cognitive requirements, young adults usually understand well the information intended by a speaker. However, the older adults typically understand spoken narratives slower, make more errors, and remember less information (1)(2)(3), even though their basic linguistic functions (such as semantic and syntactic processing) are thought to be preserved (4,5).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reduced Listener-speaker Neural Coupling Underlies Speech Understanding Difficulty in Older Adults

Liu¹,

Ding²,

et al. 2021

Preprint

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An increasing number of studies have highlighted the importance of listener-speaker neural coupling in successful verbal communication. Whether the brain-to-brain coupling changes with healthy aging and the possible role of this change in the speech comprehension of older adults remain unexplored. In this study, we scanned with fMRI a young and an older speaker telling real-life stories, and then played the audio recordings to a group of young (N = 28, aged 19-27y) and a group of older adults during scanning (N = 27, aged 53-75y), respectively. The older listeners understood the speech less well than did the young listeners, and the age of the older listeners was negatively correlated with their level of speech understanding. Compared to the young listener-speaker dyads, the older dyads exhibited reduced neural couplings in both linguistic and extra-linguistic areas. Moreover, within the older group, the listener’s age was negatively correlated with the overall strength of interbrain coupling, which in turn was associated with reduced speech understanding. These results reveal the deficits of older adults in achieving neural alignment with other brains, which may underlie the age-related decline in speech understanding.

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“…Despite these cognitive requirements, young adults can decipher the information intended by a speaker effortlessly. However, the older adults typically understand spoken narratives slower, make more errors, and remember less information (DeDe & Flax, 2016;Schneider et al, 2002;Zacks et al, 2006), even though their basic linguistic functions (such as semantic and syntactic processing) are thought to be preserved (Shafto & Tyler, 2014;Tyler et al, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reduced listener-speaker neural coupling underlies speech understanding difficulty in older adults

Liu

2020

Preprint

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An increasing body of studies have highlighted the importance of listener-speaker neural coupling in successful speech communication. How this mechanism may change with normal aging and the association of this change with age-related decline in speech understanding remain unexplored. In this study, we scanned with fMRI a young and an older speaker telling real-life stories, and then played the audio recordings to groups of young (N = 28, aged 19-27y) and older adults (N = 27, aged 58-75y) during scanning, respectively. The older listeners understood the story worse than the young, and the advancing age of the older listeners was associated with poorer speech understanding. Compared to the young listener-speaker dyads, the older dyads exhibited weaker neural couplings in both linguistic and extra-linguistic areas. Moreover, within the older group, the listener's age was negatively correlated with the overall strength of interbrain coupling, which in turn was associated with poorer speech understanding. These results reveal the deficits of older adults in achieving neural alignment with other brains, which may underlie the age-related decline in speech understanding.

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Language comprehension in aging

Cited by 17 publications

References 0 publications

Individual Differences in Peripheral Hearing and Cognition Reveal Sentence Processing Differences in Healthy Older Adults

Individual Differences in Peripheral Hearing and Cognition Reveal Sentence Processing Differences in Healthy Older Adults

Reduced Listener-speaker Neural Coupling Underlies Speech Understanding Difficulty in Older Adults

Reduced listener-speaker neural coupling underlies speech understanding difficulty in older adults

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