Author Date

2026-06-11

Degree Name

Department

Communication Disorders

College

David O. McKay School of Education

Defense Date

2026-05-19

Publication Date

2026-07-02

First Faculty Advisor

Christopher Dromey

First Faculty Reader

Tyson Harmon

Honors Coordinator

Dallin Bailey

Keywords

divided attention, dual-task, interference, multitasking, attention, aging

Abstract

Multitasking is common in daily life. Previous studies have often relied on contrived tasks and utterances to explore divided attention and speech. The focus of the present study was on older adults performing everyday computer tasks while speaking naturally. Thirty participants aged 55 - 82 participated in speech-only, computer-only, and simultaneous speech and computer tasks to measure dual-task interference of the two activities. The speech task consisted of 60-second speech samples based on a list of procedural discourse prompts. Three computer tasks were completed with and without concurrent speech, one requiring data-entry and sorting and a text formatting task with two levels. Speech tasks were analyzed for speaking time ratio, speech rate in words per minute, and mean and standard deviation of both fundamental frequency and intensity. Computer tasks were analyzed based on correct and incorrectly formatted words. Performance on both speaking and computer tasks was significantly negatively impacted in dual-task conditions. For speech, speaking time ratio and speech rate decreased when paired with the data-entry task, and fundamental frequency variability increased in all three dual-task conditions compared to speech-only. Performance on all three computer tasks was also found to suffer in dual-task conditions. These findings indicate significant interference between speech and computer tasks in older adults and are in alignment with the existing body of research around dual-task interference. Results suggest that older adults’ performance is likely to suffer in both speech and computer tasks in dual-task conditions. This finding may be useful for speech-language clinical service providers.