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

Abstract

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.

Acknowledgments

Preliminary reports of this research were presented at the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, in November 2006 and submitted by the second author in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a M.A. in Psychology from the University of Kansas.

This research was supported in part by grants from the NIH to the University of Kansas through the Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Center, grant number P30 HD-002528, and the Center for Biobehavioral Neurosciences in Communication Disorders, grant number P30 DC-005803 as well as by grant R01 AG-025906 from the National Institute on Aging to Susan Kemper. The digital pursuit rotor was developed by Doug Kieweg of the BNCD and is available upon request.

Notes

Note. Means in the same column with different subscripts are significantly different at p < .05.

Note. MLU = mean length of utterance; WPM = words per minute; MCU = mean clauses per utterance; DLevel = developmental level; PDensity = propositional density.

For each measure, means in the same column with different subscripts are significantly different at p < .05.

*p < .05; **p < .01.