Abstract

This study was divided into two parts. Study 1 examined the spoken language production of neurologically healthy adults (NHA) in selective and divided attention conditions during a story retell task. NHA participant groups consisted of 21 younger (26–54), 19 older (55–69), and 20 elderly (70–85) adults. Study 2 investigated how the language production of four people with aphasia (PWA) compared to their respective NHA group. All participants retold stories in a silent baseline condition, three background noise conditions (cocktail party, conversation, phone call), and one dual-task condition (tone discrimination). Language production measures (speech rate, disfluent verbalizations, language efficiency, lexical diversity, lexical-phonological errors), tone-discrimination accuracy and response time, and perceived effort and stress were compared across groups and conditions. Results of Study 1 revealed that the language of elderly adults was significantly less efficient and had more disfluent verbalizations than that of both younger and older adults, and the language of older adults was significantly less efficient and had more disfluent verbalizations than that of younger adults. The tone discrimination accuracy and response time of elderly adults was significantly lower than that of younger adults. Older and elderly adults showed greater levels of perceived stress than younger adults. Across groups, lexical diversity decreased and lexical-phonological errors and disfluent verbalizations increased during the dual-task and phone call conditions. Costs to tone discrimination accuracy, response time, perceived effort, and perceived stress were found in the dual-task condition across groups. These findings suggest that some, but not all, measures of spoken language production are impacted by aging, and that selective and divided attention interferes with spoken language production for NHA. Results of Study 2 show that the four PWA were distinguished from their respective NHA adult group for all dependent variables in at least one condition. Percent lexical-phonological errors, percent disfluent verbalizations, and speech rate were the dependent variables that distinguished PWA from NHA the most. However, the language production, tone-discrimination response, perceived effort, and perceived stress of each PWA were unique to the individual. These findings suggest that lexical-phonological errors, percent disfluent verbalizations, and speech rate may be useful measures for discerning individuals with mild aphasia from NHA speakers in a variety of conditions.

Degree

MS

College and Department

David O. McKay School of Education; Communication Disorders

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2024-03-01

Document Type

Thesis

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd13109

Keywords

divided attention, age groups, language, noise, distraction, aphasia

Language

english

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