Spoken language production in adults: Examining age-related differences in syntactic complexity

Nippold, Marilyn A.; Cramond, Paige M.; Hayward-Mayhew, Christine

doi:10.3109/02699206.2013.841292

Cited by 45 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…The observed age-related decline was irrespective of stimulus. Our findings are similar to those reported by Nippold and colleagues (2014) who found that syntactic measures in spoken discourse remain stable for adults in in their 20s, 40s and 60s (Nippold, Cramond, & Hayward-Mayhew, 2014). Similar to Kemper et al, (2001) and Marini et al, (2005), we found a statistically significantly drop in utterance complexity beginning with the seventh decade.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Microlinguistic processes that contribute to the ability to relay main events: influence of age

Capilouto

Wright

Maddy

2015

Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition

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The purpose of the current study was to determine the microlinguistic processes that contribute to picture description in healthy adults across the life span. Two-hundred forty healthy adults were separated into three groups, young (n = 80; 20-39), middle (n = 80; 40 - 69), and older (n = 80; 70 - 89). Participants provided language samples in response to two single and two sequential pictures analyzed for total number of words, informativeness, lexical diversity, syntactic complexity, and main events. The older group produced a significantly lower proportion of main events for the single and sequential pictures compared to the other groups. Group differences on the microlinguistic measures varied depending on the measure and the stimulus type. Further, regardless of task, total number of words significantly related to main event production for the young and middle aged groups, but not the older group. Results of the current study extend previous findings by researchers who have investigated discourse production in cognitively healthy, older adults. Using a multi-level approach, we found that linguistic processes across different levels interact; however, the relationship is age-dependent. By including a middle-aged group we identify the potential course of documented change and our results indicate that the changes in language processes with age may not be linear.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Microlinguistic processes that contribute to the ability to relay main events: influence of age

Capilouto

Wright

Maddy

2015

Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…In an extension of this work, Berman and Nir-Sagiv (2009) also used clause packages (clause package density) as the framework for analyses of written texts from school children (nine-to ten-and twelve-to thirteen-year-olds), adolescents, and adults, and reported an increase in density with age in all languages. Other studies focusing primarily on complex syntactic development in older children and adults (from 12-60 years), also show continued growth in the ability to use complex structures into adulthood (see Loban, 1976;Verhoeven, Aparici, Cahana-Amitay, van Hell, Kriz, & Viguie-Simon, 2002;Nippold et al, 2007;Nippold, Cramond, & Hayward-Mayhew, 2013;Nippold, Frantz-Kaspar, Cramond, Kirk, Hayward-Mayhew, & MacKinnon, 2014). However, given the different study designs and measures of complexity, it is not possible to map a continuous developmental trajectory throughout childhood on the same task.…”

Section: Methodological Differencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Growth in syntactic complexity between four years and adulthood: evidence from a narrative task

et al. 2018

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Studies examining productive syntax have used varying elicitation methods and have tended to focus on either young children or adolescents/adults, so we lack an account of syntactic development throughout middle childhood. We describe here the results of an analysis of clause complexity in narratives produced by 354 speakers aged from four years to adulthood using the Expressive, Receptive, and Recall of Narrative Instrument (ERRNI). We show that the number of clauses per utterance increased steadily through this age range. However, the distribution of clause types depended on which of two stories was narrated, even though both stories were designed to have a similar story structure. In addition, clausal complexity was remarkably similar regardless of whether the speaker described a narrative from pictures, or whether the same narrative was recalled from memory. Finally, our findings with the youngest children showed that the task of generating a narrative from pictures may underestimate syntactic competence in those aged below five years.

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“…In the dementia group, the decline was accelerated by the disease regardless of age. These results are important as they show that the decline in complexity with increasing age first reported by Snowdon et al (1996) continues in late adulthood, although some studies have not observed this decline in complexity with increasing age, possibly due to the different measures used (Nippold et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Is cognitive impairment associated with reduced syntactic complexity in writing? Evidence from automated text analysis

et al. 2020

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Background: Written language impairments are common in Alzheimer's disease and reduced syntactic complexity in written discourse has been observed decades before the onset of dementia. The validity of average dependency distance (ADD), a measure of syntactic complexity, in cognitive decline needs to be studied further to evaluate its clinical relevance. Aims: The aim of the study was to determine whether ADD is associated with levels of cognitive impairment in memory clinic patients. Methods & procedures: We analyzed written texts collected in clinical practice from 114 participants with subjective cognitive impairment, mild cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer's disease during routine assessment at a memory clinic. ADD was measured using automated analysis methods consisting of a syntactic parser and a part-of-speech tagger. Outcomes & results: Our results show a significant association between ADD and levels of cognitive impairment, using ordinal logistic regression models. Conclusion: These results suggest that ADD is clinically relevant with regard to levels of cognitive impairment and indicate a diagnostic potential for ADD in cognitive assessment.

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Spoken language production in adults: Examining age-related differences in syntactic complexity

Cited by 45 publications

References 14 publications

Microlinguistic processes that contribute to the ability to relay main events: influence of age

Microlinguistic processes that contribute to the ability to relay main events: influence of age

Growth in syntactic complexity between four years and adulthood: evidence from a narrative task

Is cognitive impairment associated with reduced syntactic complexity in writing? Evidence from automated text analysis

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