The Effects of Varying Task Priorities on Language Production by Young and Older Adults

The present study compared how varying task priorities affected young and older adults' language production. Both young and older adults responded to monetary incentives to vary their performance when simultaneously talking and tracking a pursuit rotor. Tracking performance improved when they w...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Experimental aging research 2011-03, Vol.37 (2), p.198-219
Main Authors: Kemper, Susan, Schmalzried, RaLynn, Herman, Ruth, Mohankumar, Deepthi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Adult. Elderly
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Aging
Aging - psychology
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition & reasoning
Comparative studies
Developmental psychology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Language
Older people
Performance evaluation
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reward
Speech
Task Performance and Analysis
Young Adult
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The present study compared how varying task priorities affected young and older adults' language production. Both young and older adults responded to monetary incentives to vary their performance when simultaneously talking and tracking a pursuit rotor. Tracking performance improved when they were rewarded for tracking and declined when they were rewarded for talking. Both young and older adults also spoke more slowly when rewarded for tracking and more rapidly when rewarded for talking. Young produced less complex sentences when rewarded for tracking and produced more complex sentences when rewarded for talking. However, older adults did not vary their grammatical complexity as a function of monetary incentives. These results are consistent with prior studies suggesting that older adults use a simplified speech register in response to dual-task demands.
ISSN:0361-073X
1096-4657
DOI:10.1080/0361073X.2011.554513