Linguistic Analyses of the Discourse Narratives of Young and Aged Women

Walker, Virginia G.; Roberts, Patricia; Hedrick, Dona Lea

doi:10.1159/000265885

Cited by 16 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…As explained above, the reported differences in male and female communication as well as the difficulty in providing comparable discourse tasks necessitated this focus. Until the gender effects on discourse are clarified it may be prudent to follow Walker et al .’s (: 59) advice that ‘the language functions of men and women must be studied separately’. However, it is imperative for further research to include female speakers in order to investigate whether the results and conclusions of this study can apply to the elderly population as a whole.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Textual cohesion in oral narrative and procedural discourse: the effects of ageing and cognitive skills

Sherratt

Bryan

2018

Intl J Lang & Comm Disor

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Background Knowledge of the discourse performance of non‐brain‐damaged individuals is critical not only for its differentiation from disordered expression but also for more accurate models of ageing and communication. The effect of ageing and cognitive skills on the cohesive adequacy of discourse has, until now, presented a confusing and ambiguous picture. Aims To examine comprehensively the effects of both age and cognitive skills on the discourse cohesion of 32 non‐brain‐damaged males divided into four age groups. Methods & Procedures A large body of narrative and procedural samples (394 samples) was elicited from the participants. Their cognitive skills were determined using three tests, whilst their discourse cohesion was analyzed and correlated with the cognitive test results. Outcomes & Results This extensive investigation of ageing effects on discourse cohesion and their relationship to cognitive behaviour did not provide neat generalizable results. It showed that ageing significantly increases the number of cohesive errors and reduces the quantity of referential ties in picture‐sequence narratives. The changes with age were limited to two aspects of cohesion and not linear across age groups. The participants’ cognitive skills declined with age. Correlations between some cognitive tests and certain cohesive changes suggest co‐occurring deficits rather than a causal explanation of cohesive decline with age. Conclusions & Implications With ageing there are increased cohesive errors and decreased referential ties, co‐occurring with declining cognitive skills. This study yields important guidance for future research, suggesting that picture‐sequence narrative is the most effective tool for clinical evaluation of discourse, but also that findings from one discourse sample may be misleading.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Textual cohesion in oral narrative and procedural discourse: the effects of ageing and cognitive skills

Sherratt

Bryan

2018

Intl J Lang & Comm Disor

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“…The relatively short latency of the N140 elicited to the complex auditory stimuli could allow for the rapid processing of incoming auditory information at around 7 items/second. Continuously incoming vocal information for humans in every day life usually consists of speech, typically with an average rate of 172 words/ minute during regular speech (Walker, Roberts, & Hedrick, 1988). Words consist of multiple phonemes, and for example, the average phonemes/word in Swedish discourse is around 6.78 (Spens, 1995).…”

Section: Audiovisual Mismatched Stimulus Pairs Elicit a Neural Responmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural responses elicited to face motion and vocalization pairings

et al. 2007

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During social interactions our brains continuously integrate incoming auditory and visual input from the movements and vocalizations of others. Yet, the dynamics of the neural events elicited to these multisensory stimuli remain largely uncharacterized. Here we recorded audiovisual scalp event-related potentials (ERPs) to dynamic human faces with associated human vocalizations. Audiovisual controls were a dynamic monkey face with a species-appropriate vocalization, and a house with opening front door with a creaking door sound. Subjects decided if audiovisual stimulus trials were congruent (e.g. human face-human sound) or incongruent (e.g. house image-monkey sound). An early auditory ERP component, N140, was largest to human and monkey vocalizations. This effect was strongest in the presence of the dynamic human face, suggesting that species-specific visual information can modulate auditory ERP characteristics. A motion-induced visual N170 did not change amplitude or latency across visual motion category in the presence of sound. A species-specific incongruity response consisting of a late positive ERP at around 400 ms, P400, was selectively larger only when human faces were mismatched with a non-human sound. We also recorded visual ERPs at trial onset, and found that the category-specific N170 did not alter its behavior as a function of stimulus category-somewhat unexpected as two face types were contrasted with a house image. In conclusion, we present evidence for species-specificity in vocalization selectivity in early ERPs, and in a multisensory incongruity response whose amplitude is modulated only when the human face motion is paired with an incongruous auditory stimulus.

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“…Glosser and Deser (1992) reported no differences between middle-aged and older healthy adults with respect to lexical production errors and 148 cohesive ties. However, greater lexical di-versity (in type-token ratios) was reported in older women (Walker, Roberts, & Hedrick, 1988), and Obler's (1980) description of elaborated output in oral descriptions of the Cookie Theft picture also suggests an increase in lexical diversity. In summary, at the microlinguistic level of analysis, semantic behaviors in older adults show decrements primarily when performance requires speed, divergent processes, and generative naming functions.…”

Section: Semanticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unfortunately, the findings reported are somewhat discrepant. A number of researchers have reported no change in syntactic complexity with increasing age (Cannito et al, 1988;Glosser & Deser, 1992;Labov & Augur, 1993;Shewan & Henderson, 1988;Ulatowska & Chapman, 1991;Walker, et al, 1988).…”

Section: Sentential Level Analyses Of Length and Syntactic Complexitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Discourse Behaviors in Older Adults

Shadden¹

1997

Semin Speech Lang

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An overview of the changes in older adults' comprehension of language and discourse is provided before changes in production are discussed in some detail. Age-related changes in discourse production have been studied in terms of semantic skills, syntactic complexity, verbal fragmentation, information load, cohesion, macrostructural elements, and conversation. In spite of the heterogeneity in older adults' discourse behaviors, they have a tendency to use shorter, less complex sentences and more indefinite, ambiguous references. Nevertheless, the basic conversational skills of the normally aging elderly are usually well preserved.

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Linguistic Analyses of the Discourse Narratives of Young and Aged Women

Cited by 16 publications

References 7 publications

Textual cohesion in oral narrative and procedural discourse: the effects of ageing and cognitive skills

Textual cohesion in oral narrative and procedural discourse: the effects of ageing and cognitive skills

Neural responses elicited to face motion and vocalization pairings

Discourse Behaviors in Older Adults

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