Comprehension/Adaptation to Rapid Speech in Older Adults

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Spoken language comprehension is a primary means of communication for most adults, and remains so throughout the lifespan. Although older adults' language comprehension is generally good, age-related cognitive decline results in some comprehension deficits. These deficits are not simply a consequence of age-related declines in hearing acuity. The long-term goal of this research program is to find strategies that older adults can actively employ to improve their comprehension of spoken language. This will be accomplished by assessing young and older participants' comprehension of meaningful speech that varies in both speech rate (accomplished using time-compression techniques) and syntactic complexity, two manipulations that older adults are known to find differentially more difficult than their younger counterparts. Of particular interest is whether older adults' performance will improve with repeated exposure to time-compressed speech, and whether this improvement for rapid speech will aid in the comprehension of syntactically complex speech.