Effects of aging in communicative-pragmatic ability Hilviu Dize a, Parola Alberto a, Gabbatore Ilaria b, Bosco Francesca M. a, c a Department
b
of Psychology, University of Turin, Italy Research Unit of Logopedics, Child Language Research Center, Faculty of Humanities, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland c Neuroscience Institute of Turin (NIT), University of Turin, Italy
[email protected]
Introduction • Communicative-pragmatic ability is complex since it is characterized by the interplay of many elements such as language, use of gestures and paralinguistic connotation (e.g., intonation, facial expression). This ability allows people to communicate effectively in everyday life. Pragmatic communication involves some cognitive functions, i.e. executive functions, such as memory and inhibition, and theory of mind, and their role in explaining people's communicative abilities has also been investigated in literature (Bosco et al. 2017). Elderly adults, even when healthy, may exhibit a reduction in the ability to communicate efficiently, due to a generalized cognitive decline that can characterise old age (Zanini et al., 2005). • Previous studies found age-related changes in cognitive functions such as memory (Bopp & Verhaeghen, 2005), attention and inhibition (Borella, Carretti & De Beni, 2008) and Theory of Mind (ToM) (Bottiroli et al., 2016). To date, only few studies have examined at the same time the role that Executive Functions (EFs) and ToM can play in the comprehension and production of different communicative acts during the aging process. • The primary aim of this research is to provide a complete assessment of communicative-pragmatic abilities (linguistic, extralinguist, paralinguistic, conversational and social appropriateness to the context ) of healthy aging adults and secondly to study the interaction between EFs and ToM in communicative-pragmatic abilities in the aging process. In particular, we wanted to provide preliminary results concerning a wide assessment of communicative-pragmatic ability. Moreover, we wanted to investigate if and to what extent a decline of cognitive functions may be related to the communicative-pragmatic one.
Methods
PARTICIPANTS
• 15 healthy Old Adults (OA). 6 males, 9 females; age range: 65 - 75 years, M = 68,9 ( SD = 3,2 ); education: M = 13,1 ( SD = 4,0); • 15 healthy Senior-Old Adults (SOA). sex: 6 males, 9 females; age range: 76-86 years, M = 78,9 ( SD = 2,9); education: M = 10,7 ( SD = 4,8 ); • 15 controls (Control Group, CG). 8 males, 7 females; age range: 20 - 40 years, M = 25,2 (SD = 2,7); education: M = 14,1 (SD = 2,9). No significant differences between groups were found on educational level (F= 2,906; p=.066). • Exclusion criteria were: 1) the presence of severe cognitive or linguistic deficits 2) evidence of current or past neurological disorder (e.g., epilepsy) 3) substance or alcohol use disorder 4) anamnesis of major neurological or neuropsychological disease 5) hearing or vision problems 6) history of head injury 7) to take mood stabilizers. All the participants were Italian native speaker. • Only subjects with sufficient cognitive and communication skills, as resulting from the achievement of a cut-off score in the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA; Nasreddine et al., 2005) and the Token Test (De Renzi & Vignolo, 1962) have been included in the sample. MATERIALS AND PROCEDURE • To evaluate communicative pragmatic-ability we used the Assessment Battery for Communication (ABaCo, Bosco et al., 2012a; Angeleri et al., 2015, GIUNTI OS). ABaCo is a validated clinical tool that investigates all the principal pragmatic aspects involved in communicative exchanges and different communicative modalities and it provides a complete assessment of the pragmatic performance. It is characterized by two scales: comprehension and production. Each scale is divided in 5 sub-scales: linguistic, extralinguistic, paralinguistic, contextual and conversational. • Furthermore, we evaluated: Executive functions (EFs) - working memory (Digit and Listening Span tests, Prose memory test), inhibition (Stroop test), cognitive flexibility (Nelson’s test) and Theory of Mind (ToM) - describing the emotional and mental state (Reading the Mind in the Eyes test), first-order ToM (Strange stories tasks: mentalistic and physical) and second-order ToM (ToM second-order stories task). DATA ANALYSIS • To investigate the presence of significant differences in communicative-pragmatic performance, we performed a 2x3 repeated measures ANOVA with a withinsubjects factor Scale (2 levels: comprehension vs. production sub-scales) and between-subjects factor Group (3 levels: Senior-Old Adults, Old Adults and Controls) as between-subjects factor. To evaluate the correlation between the communicative pragmatic-ability (evaluated by ABaCo) and Age, EFs and ToM, we performed a correlation analysis (Pearson’s r) and a regression analysis was performed on the cognitive factors that where significant on pragmatic performance.
Results * *
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Test
Group SOA Forward OA Digital Span CG SOA Backward OA Digital Span CG SOA Listening OA Span CG SOA Prose OA memory CG SOA Nelson's test OA CG SOA Stroop OA CG (a)
Figure 1. ABaCo: percentage of correct answers. Conversational scale is not divided in Comprehension and Production since these two aspects are simultaneously active during a conversation
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Mean 5,36 5,60 7,60 4,43 5,67 6,60 15,64 16,73 26,48 10,59 10,60 11,91 3,64 4,87 6,33 19,54 18,47 19,11
SD 1,86 1,72 1,99 1,55 2,13 2,32 5,50 4,86 5,68 3,47 3,03 1,22 2,13 2,29 0,72 5,63 7,30 7,92
Some scenes taken by ABaCo (Bosco et al, 2012a; Angeleri et al., 2015, Giunti OS)
Test Group Mean SD Strange SOA 4,93 0,92 Stories OA 4,93 1,03 M. CG 5,53 0,74 Strange SOA 5,21 2,04 Stories OA 4,93 1,98 Ph. CG 6,00 1,66 SOA 0,71 0,83 ToM II OA 1,07 0,70 order CG 1,87 0,35 SOA 17,14 3,37 RME OA 18,00 3,70 CG 23,07 3,67 (b)
Table 2. Mean value distributions and standard deviations of tests evaluating (a) EFs and (b) ToM.
The ANOVA revealed a main effect of Group (F= 8,667; p=.001; η2p = .292 ) (three level: CG, OA and SOA) on pragmatic performance at the ABaCo and a main effect of Scale (F= 8,102; p=.007; η2p = .162 ) (comprehension vs production). The interaction effect was non-significant, Group x Scale (F= 1,874; p=.166; η2p = .082 ). Bonferroni corrected paired-contrast showed as OA (p < .005) and SOA (p < .005) performed worse than CG, while no difference was found between the two groups of elderly (p = 1.0). ABaCo correlates with Age (r=-.514; p=.000), EFs (Listening Span test (r=.560; p=.000), Forward Digit Span test (r=.604; p
