Age‐related differences in nonverbal decoding ability

Abstract

Nonverbal decoding ability for a group of elderly adult females (mean age 62.5 years) was compared to a group of adult females (mean age 21.8 years). The Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (PONS) (Rosenthal et al., 1979a) presented 20 affective interpersonal situations under auditory, visual, and audio‐visual conditions to both groups. Subjects scored a binary choice format for each of the 220 stimuli. Nonverbal scores were significantly lower for the older group across all three experimental conditions. Results are discussed in relation to established attention, acuity, memory and perceptual changes attributed to human aging.

Key concepts:

• Nonverbal behavior
• elderly
• nonlinguistic processing
• perception
• female