Poor coherence in older people's speech is explained by impaired semantic and executive processes
Poor coherence in older people's speech is explained by impaired semantic and executive processes
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DOI：
10.1101/320473
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发表时间：
2018-05
期刊：
影响因子：
7.7
通讯作者：
P. Hoffman;Ekaterina Loginova;A. Russell
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
P. Hoffman;Ekaterina Loginova;A. Russell
连贯说话的能力对于有效沟通至关重要，但随着年龄的增长而下降：老年人更频繁地发表跑题的演讲。人们对导致这种衰退的认知因素知之甚少。我们预测，保持连贯性依赖于对激活的关于世界的语义知识的有效调节，特别是对当前相关语义表示的选择来驱动语音生成。为了验证这一点，我们收集了840个语音样本，并测量了60名年轻人和老年人的执行和语义能力，使用了一种新的计算方法来量化连贯性。语义选择能力可以预测连贯性，语义知识水平和领域通用执行能力也可以预测连贯性。这些因素完全解释了与年龄相关的连贯性缺陷。我们的研究结果表明，随着人们年龄的增长，保持语言的连贯性变得越来越具有挑战性，因为他们积累了更多的知识，但却无法有效地调节如何激活和使用这些知识。
The ability to speak coherently is essential for effective communication but declines with age: older people more frequently produce tangential, off-topic speech. The cognitive factors underpinning this decline are poorly understood. We predicted that maintaining coherence relies on effective regulation of activated semantic knowledge about the world, and particularly on the selection of currently relevant semantic representations to drive speech production. To test this, we collected 840 speech samples along with measures of executive and semantic ability from 60 young and older adults, using a novel computational method to quantify coherence. Semantic selection ability predicted coherence, as did level of semantic knowledge and a measure of domain-general executive ability. These factors fully accounted for the age-related coherence deficit. Our results indicate that maintaining coherence in speech becomes more challenging as people age because they accumulate more knowledge but are less able to effectively regulate how it is activated and used.