Age-related differences in multimodal recipient design: Younger, but not older adults, adapt speech and co-speech gestures to common ground
Source
Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 34, 2, (2019), pp. 254-271ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor
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Organization
SW OZ DCC PL
Toegepaste Taalwetenschap
PI Group Neurobiology of Language
Journal title
Language, Cognition and Neuroscience
Volume
vol. 34
Issue
iss. 2
Languages used
English (eng)
Page start
p. 254
Page end
p. 271
Subject
110 000 Neurocognition of Language; Giving cognition a hand: Linking spatial cognition to linguistic expression in native and late signers and bimodal bilinguals; Language & Communication; Language in our hands: Acquisition of spatial language in deaf and hearing children; Multimodal language and communication; PsycholinguisticsAbstract
Speakers can adapt their speech and co-speech gestures based on knowledge shared with an addressee (common ground-based recipient design). Here, we investigate whether these adaptations are modulated by the speaker's age and cognitive abilities. Younger and older participants narrated six short comic stories to a same-aged addressee. Half of each story was known to both participants, the other half only to the speaker. The two age groups did not differ in terms of the number of words and narrative events mentioned per narration, or in terms of gesture frequency, gesture rate, or percentage of events expressed multimodally. However, only the younger participants reduced the amount of verbal and gestural information when narrating mutually known as opposed to novel story content. Age-related differences in cognitive abilities did not predict these differences in common ground-based recipient design. The older participants' communicative behaviour may therefore also reflect differences in social or pragmatic goals.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [238441]
- Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging [3824]
- Electronic publications [122515]
- Faculty of Arts [29387]
- Faculty of Social Sciences [29483]
- Open Access publications [97510]
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