Laboratory of Language and Cognition, Department of Humanities, University of Genoa, Via Balbi 2, 16126, Genoa, Italy.
Department of Educational Sciences, Psychology Unit, University of Genoa, Corso Podestà 2, 16128, Genoa, Italy.
J Psycholinguist Res. 2024 Feb 29;53(2):20. doi: 10.1007/s10936-024-10061-0.
Research investigating pragmatic abilities in healthy aging suggests that both production and comprehension might be compromised; however, it is not clear how pragmatic abilities evolve in late adulthood, as well as when difficulties are more likely to arise. The aim of this study is to investigate the decline of pragmatic skills in aging, and to explore what cognitive and demographic factors support pragmatic competence. We assessed pragmatic production skills, including discourse abilities such as speech, informativeness, information flow, paralinguistic aspects, as well as the ability to produce informative descriptions of pictures, and pragmatic comprehension skills, which encompassed the ability to understand discourse and the main aspects of a narrative text, to infer non-literal meanings and to comprehend verbal humor in a group of elderly individuals and in a sample of younger participants. Moreover, specific cognitive functions (short-term memory, verbal and visuospatial working memory, inhibition Theory of Mind, and Cognitive Reserve) were assessed in both groups. Pragmatic difficulties seem to occur in late adulthood, likely around 70 years, and emerge more prominently when participants are asked to understand verbal humor. Age was the only predictor of general pragmatic performance in a sample of cognitively unimpaired older adults; conversely, when elderly individuals with less intact inhibitory control are considered, a general role of inhibition emerged, in addition to working memory and ToM in specific tasks.
研究表明，在健康老龄化人群中，语用能力的产出和理解能力可能都会受到影响；然而，目前尚不清楚语用能力在晚年是如何发展的，以及何时更容易出现困难。本研究旨在探讨衰老过程中语用技能的下降，并探索哪些认知和人口统计学因素支持语用能力。我们评估了语用产出技能，包括话语能力，如言语、信息量、信息流、副语言方面，以及对图片进行信息丰富描述的能力，以及语用理解技能，包括理解话语和叙事文本的主要方面、推断非字面意义和理解言语幽默的能力，在一组老年个体和一组年轻参与者中进行评估。此外，还评估了两组参与者的特定认知功能（短期记忆、言语和视空间工作记忆、抑制、心理理论和认知储备）。语用困难似乎出现在晚年，可能在 70 岁左右，当要求参与者理解言语幽默时，这些困难更为明显。在认知未受损的老年人群体中，年龄是一般语用表现的唯一预测因素；相反，当考虑到抑制控制较差的老年个体时，除了特定任务中的工作记忆和心理理论外，抑制还会起到一般作用。
