Why do older adults have difficulty following conversations?

Psychol Aging

Biological Communications Systems, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto at Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6, Canada.

Published: March 2006


Category Ranking

98%

Total Visits

921

Avg Visit Duration

2 minutes

Citations

20

Article Abstract

Age-related declines in understanding conversation may be largely a consequence of perceptual rather than cognitive declines. B. A. Schneider, M. Daneman, D. R. Murphy, and S. Kwong-See (2000) showed that age-related declines in comprehending single-talker discourse could be eliminated when adjustments were made to compensate for the poorer hearing of older adults. The authors used B. A. Schneider et al.'s methodology to investigate age-related differences in comprehending 2-person conversations. Compensating for hearing difficulties did not eliminate age-related differences when the 2 talkers were spatially separated by 9 degrees or 45 degrees azimuth, but it did when the talkers' contributions came from one central location. These findings suggest that dialogue poses more of a problem for older than for younger adults, not because of the additional cognitive requirements of having to follow 2 talkers rather than 1, but because older adults are not as good as younger adults at making use of the auditory cues that are available for helping listeners perceptually segregate the contributions of 2 spatially separated talkers.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0882-7974.21.1.49DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

older adults
12
age-related declines
8
age-related differences
8
spatially separated
8
younger adults
8
older
4
adults difficulty
4
difficulty conversations?
4
age-related
4
conversations? age-related
4

Similar Publications

Importance: Increasingly, strategies to systematically detect melanomas invoke targeted approaches, whereby those at highest risk are prioritized for skin screening. Many tools exist to predict future melanoma risk, but most have limited accuracy and are potentially biased.

Objectives: To develop an improved melanoma risk prediction tool for invasive melanoma.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Concomitant Comedications and Survival With First-Line Pembrolizumab in Advanced Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer.

JAMA Netw Open

September 2025

Oncostat U1018, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), Ligue Contre le Cancer, Paris-Saclay University, Villejuif, France.

Importance: Antibiotics, steroids, and proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are suspected to decrease the efficacy of immunotherapy.

Objective: To explore the association of comedications with overall survival (OS) in patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Design, Setting, And Participants: This nationwide retrospective cohort study used target trial emulations of patients newly diagnosed with NSCLC from January 2015 to December 2022, identified from the French national health care database.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: The efficacy of home end-of-life care in enhancing the quality of life for terminally ill patients and families has been well documented. While previous studies have explored perspectives on quality home palliative care and end-of-life care in several countries, limited knowledge exists regarding its specific components in the Chinese context.

Objective: To explore the core elements that constitute quality home end-of-life care in China.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: Research in behavioral economics has demonstrated that people have irrational biases, which make them susceptible to decisional shortcuts, or heuristics. The extent to which physicians consciously might use nudges to exploit these heuristics and thereby influence their patients' decision-making is unclear. In addition, ethical questions about the conscious use of nudges in medicine persist, yet little is known about how physicians experience and perceive their use.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors are highly effective medications for several immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs). However, safety concerns have led to regulatory restrictions.

Objective: To compare the risk of adverse events with JAK inhibitors vs tumor necrosis factor (TNF) antagonists in patients with IMIDs in head-to-head comparative effectiveness studies.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF