Some Limits on Encoding Visible Speech and Gestures Using a Dichotic Shadowing Task

Visible speech and gestures are two forms of available language information that can be used by listeners to help them understand the speaker's meaning. Previous research has shown that older adults are particularly dependent on visible speech, yet seem to profit less than younger adults from t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences Psychological sciences and social sciences, 1999-11, Vol.54B (6), p.P347-P349
Main Authors: Thompson, Laura A., Guzman, Felipe A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Adult. Elderly
Age Factors
Aged
Aging - physiology
Biological and medical sciences
Developmental psychology
Dichotic Listening Tests - methods
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Gerontology
Gestures
Humans
Light
Male
Memory - physiology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Space life sciences
Speech
Speech - physiology
Speech Perception - physiology
Visual Perception - physiology
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Summary:Visible speech and gestures are two forms of available language information that can be used by listeners to help them understand the speaker's meaning. Previous research has shown that older adults are particularly dependent on visible speech, yet seem to profit less than younger adults from the speaker's gestures. To understand how visible speech and gestures are used when listening becomes difficult, the authors conducted an experiment with a dichotic shadowing task. The experiment examined how accurately participants could shadow the right- or left-ear input when instructed to attend selectively to a particular ear and whether performance benefited from visual input. The results indicate that older adults' shadowing performance was unaffected by visible speech and gestures. Younger adults did benefit by both visible speech and gestures. Thus, under extremely attention-demanding listening conditions, older adults are unable to use a compensatory mechanism for encoding visual language.
ISSN:1079-5014
1758-5368
DOI:10.1093/geronb/54B.6.P347