Global coherence in younger and older adults: Influence of cognitive processes and discourse type

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the present research was to examine the influence of cognitive processes on discourse global coherence ability measured across different discourse tasks and collected from younger (n = 40; 20–39 years) and older (n = 40; 70–87 years) cognitively healthy adults. Study participants produced oral language samples in response to five commonly used discourse elicitation tasks and they were analyzed for maintenance of global coherence. Participants also completed memory and attention measures. Group differences on the global coherence scale were found for only one type of discourse—recounts. Across discourse elicitation tasks the lowest global coherence scores were found for recounts compared to the other discourse elicitation tasks. The influence of cognitive processes on maintenance of global coherence differed for the two age groups. For the younger group, there were no observed significant relationships. For the older group, cognitive measures were related to global coherence of stories and procedures.

Keywords:

• Discourse
• Aging
• Coherence
• Narratives
• Cognitive processes

This research was supported by the National Institute on Aging Grant R01AG029476. Much of the work was completed when the first and fourth authors were affiliated with Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ. We are especially grateful to the study participants. We also thank Marissa Stoltzfus, Dayna Libow, Annette Rak, and the volunteers in the Aging and Adult Language Lab at Arizona State University and the Discourse Processing Lab at the University of Kentucky for assistance with transcription and language analyses.