Idea selection for propositional language production

ABSTRACT

The ability to select an idea from an array of competing options is critical for successful propositional language production, and deficient idea selection contributes to propositional language impairments in clinical populations. We investigate whether three clinical idea selection tasks are sensitive to selection demands in neurologically unimpaired adults, and whether performance relates to age. 154 neurologically normal adults aged 18–89 years completed a neuropsychological baseline and three  idea selection tasks. Stimuli either activated a dominant response or multiple competing response options. All three idea selection tasks were sensitive to selection demands in terms of reaction times but not errors. Older age was associated with greater effects of selection demands on Sentence Completion task performance only. Exploratory analyses revealed a potential role of executive functioning. Overall, we demonstrate that clinical idea selection tasks are sensitive to idea selection demands in a non-clinical sample, and show some age-related differences in performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Selection
• message formulation
• conceptualization
• spoken language production
• sentence generation

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Rosemary Argall, Amelia Hobson, Jacquelyn Knight, Bonnie Law, Zoie Nott and Jenna Scambler for assisting with recruitment and testing.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Data availability statement

All data can be obtained from the corresponding author upon request.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Note that the contribution of executive functions to spoken language is not unique to conceptualization mechanisms, and that lexical (word) retrieval also relies on executive cognition (e.g., executive control, planning, working memory, etc.) (Kavé & Goral, 2017; Schnur et al., 2006).

2. We recognize that there is a long preclinical phase associated with neurodegenerative processes (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease) (Jack et al., 2018) and therefore acknowledge that some participants may have sub-clinical levels of pathology. We did not have access to biomarker data and therefore define healthy aging clinically.

3. A random sample (N = 62) of participants completed a 32-item subset of the full 44 word pair stimuli. In the 32-item subset 16 pairs were high selection and 16 were low selection.

Additional information

Funding

At the time of data collection, G.R. was supported by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award [DE120101119]; G.R. is currently supported by Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Boosting Dementia Research Leadership Fellowship [APP1135769].