Comprehension/Adaptation to Rapid Speech in Older Adults

描述(申请人提供)：口语理解是大多数成年人的主要交流方式，而且在一生中都是如此。虽然老年人的语言理解能力总体上是好的，但与年龄相关的认知能力下降会导致一些理解障碍。这些缺陷不仅仅是与年龄相关的听力下降的结果。这项研究计划的长期目标是找到老年人可以积极采用的策略，以提高他们对口语的理解。这将通过评估年轻的和年长的参与者对有意义的语音的理解来实现，这些语音在语速(使用时间压缩技术完成)和句法复杂性方面都有所不同，众所周知，老年人发现这两种操作比年轻人更难。尤其令人感兴趣的是，老年人的表现是否会随着反复接触时间压缩的语言而改善，以及这种对快速语言的改善是否有助于理解句法复杂的语言。

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.