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The Influence of Distractor Modality on Propositional Language in Healthy Ageing
Poster Session B, Friday, October 25, 10:00 - 11:30 am, Great Hall 3 and 4
Jessica Chow1, Gail Robinson2; 1University of Queensland
Introduction Propositional language is a fundamental cognitive ability required in everyday interactions. Propositional is the voluntary generation of ideas and involves core language skills (e.g., naming) and non-linguistic cognitive abilities, such as attention and executive functions. One way to investigate the influence of attention on propositional language is by using distractor interference. Interference control is an executive process, in which difficulties in propositional language production can occur in healthy ageing and individuals with executive dysfunctions (e.g., neurodegenerative diseases). This project sought to better understand the influence of attention and executive functions on propositional language production in healthy ageing. We investigated this by using non-verbal interference, which varied in modality type (i.e., auditory vs visual). Method Forty-two young adults and 28 older adults completed a novel picture-description task with interference. In this task, participants were asked to produce two sentences about the pictorial scene under two different interference conditions: auditory and visual distractors. A third control condition (i.e., distractor absent) was included to establish baseline responses between younger and older adults. We measured the number of filled pauses, response latency, quality of ideas produced (i.e., propositional density), quantity of ideas (i.e., speech rate), and errors produced (i.e., cohesion, coherence, idea repetitions, premature commitment errors, and total errors). Results Older adults produced more filled pauses compared to younger adults. Moreover, older adults produced more filled pauses in the distractor absent condition compared to other distractor modalities. Across both age groups, participants also had faster response latencies in the auditory distractor condition compared to the visual distractor condition. Compared to older adults, younger adults had a faster speech rate, but this was irrespective of distractor modality. Propositional density was also higher in the visual distractor condition compared to the auditory distractor condition across both age groups. In relation to the types of errors produced, in the distractor absent condition, cohesion errors were the most common errors produced compared to other error types. In the auditory distractor condition, both cohesion and premature commitment errors were the most common errors produced compared to other error types. In the visual distractor condition, cohesion errors were the most common errors, particularly by older adults compared to younger adults. Across the distractor conditions, participants produced a higher number of total errors in the auditory distractor condition compared to the other distractor conditions. Moreover, older adults in general produced a higher number of total errors compared to younger adults, but this was not specific to a distractor modality. Conclusion Consistent with prior literature, we found that ageing influenced propositional language, which was modulated by interference. Compared to visual interference, auditory interference influenced response latency and the number of errors produced. However, for propositional density to be influenced, the interference may need to contain meaning.
Topic Areas: Language Production,