Collaborative referencing in elderly women.

This preliminary work compared the process of collaborative referencing in younger and elderly women, a process which requires joint effort from both the speaker and the listener. Four women in their thirties and four women in their seventies were paired with an unacquainted partner within the same age group. Each pair completed six trials of a barrier task in which they had to converse about abstract figures to arrange them in the same order. With repetition of the task, both pairs of younger women reduced the number of words and turns used to complete the task while only one of the pairs of elderly women did so and, even then, used many more words than younger women to complete the task. Also, in comparison with elderly women, younger women were more likely to use strategies which facilitated least effort in completion of the task. In a task designed to ensure accuracy, elderly women made errors while younger women did not. These findings suggest that elderly women may not benefit from the collaborative nature of a conversational interaction as do younger women.