GRASP: Greater awareness of social pragmatics in ageing

到2050年，老年人的数量预计将翻一番，这对社会构成了一个重大挑战：确保我们的寿命延长的同时，我们的健康和生活质量也在提高。健康老龄化最普遍但尚未得到充分研究的障碍之一是沟通能力下降。特别是，很大一部分老龄化人口都在努力掌握实用技能，比如读懂言外之意的能力，或者以特定于伴侣的方式调整话语的能力。鉴于实用技能对健康和生活满意度的重要性，确定与年龄有关的实用能力下降的根源至关重要。传统上，研究人员试图将语用学与认知技能联系起来，因为想象自己站在别人的立场上需要一定程度的脑力锻炼。然而，结果在很大程度上尚无定论。GRASP将测试心理语言学中一个有趣的新理论：社会网络特征（例如，规模和多样性）预测语言技能高于认知技能。由于最近的研究表明网络特征与语言技能之间存在强烈的正相关和负相关，因此网络特征如何与语用学相关以及是否存在因果关系是一个实证问题。通过评估成年人一生中的认知和社会因素，我们不仅可以更好地理解语用能力的基础，还可以了解不同因素在不同发展阶段的重要程度。这些发现将用于指导该项目的第二个目标：为成年人创建首个实用衰退筛查工具。该工具将为个人提供有关其沟通健康的即时知识，提高对缺陷和伴随风险的认识，并为旨在改善沟通的干预研究打开大门。总之，这个项目将为我们消除成功老龄化的沟通障碍奠定基础。

The number of older adults are expected to double by 2050, presenting a major challenge for society: ensuring that as our lives are extended, so too is our health and quality of life. One of the most prevalent yet understudied barriers to healthy ageing is communicative decline. In particular, a large segment of the ageing population struggles with pragmatic skills, such as the ability to read between the lines or tailor utterances in partner-specific ways. Given the importance of pragmatic skills for health and life satisfaction, it is critical that the sources of age-related pragmatic decline are identified. Traditionally, researchers have attempted to link pragmatics to cognitive skills, since picturing oneself in another's shoes requires some degree of mental gymnastics. However, the results have been largely inconclusive. GRASP will test an intriguing new theory in psycholinguistics: the idea that social network features (e.g., size and diversity) predict linguistic skills above and beyond cognitive skills. Since recent work shows strong positive and negative associations between network features and language skills, it is an empirical question as to how network features relate to pragmatics and whether a causal relationship exists. By assessing both cognitive and social factors in adults over the lifespan, we will not only come to a better understanding of what underlies pragmatic competence, but also the extent to which different factors are important at different developmental stages. These findings will be used to guide the project's secondary aim: the creation of the first screening tool of pragmatic decline for adults. The tool will provide individuals with immediate knowledge about their communicative health, raising awareness of deficits and accompanying risks, and opening the door to intervention studies aimed at improving communication. Together, this project will lay the groundwork for us to remove communicative barriers to successful ageing.