Age-Related Effects on Language Production During Selective and Divided Attention Conditions: Implications for Aphasia Assessment.

Purpose: This study was divided into two parts. Study 1 aimed to investigate how dual-task and select background noise conditions impact language production of neurologically healthy adults (NHA). Study 2 aimed to use the sample from Study 1 to identify whether four people with mild aphasia perform...

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Publicado en:Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research Vol. 69; no. 4; pp. 1783 - 1804
Autores principales: McDonald, Emily, Harmon, Tyson G., Bailey, Dallin J.
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Apr2026
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Apr2026
      vid: 69
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      pub: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
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        10.1044/2025_JSLHR-24-00550
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        atl: Age-Related Effects on Language Production During Selective and Divided Attention Conditions: Implications for Aphasia Assessment.
      aug:
        au:
          McDonald, Emily
          Harmon, Tyson G.
          Bailey, Dallin J.
        affil: Department of Communication Disorders, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT
      su:
        Task performance
        Age distribution
        Attention
        Language acquisition
        Data analysis
        Research funding
        Phonological awareness
        Two-way analysis of variance
        Kruskal-Wallis Test
        Questionnaires
        Aphasia
        Severity of illness index
        Descriptive statistics
        Experimental design
        Speech evaluation
        Statistics
        Friedman test (Statistics)
        Case studies
        Comparative studies
        Data analysis software
        Transducers
        Inter-observer reliability
      sug:
        subj:
          Task performance
          Age distribution
          Attention
          Language acquisition
          Semiconductor and other electronic component manufacturing
          Other Electronic Component Manufacturing
          Data analysis
          Research funding
          Phonological awareness
          Two-way analysis of variance
          Kruskal-Wallis Test
          Questionnaires
          Aphasia
          Severity of illness index
          Descriptive statistics
          Experimental design
          Speech evaluation
          Statistics
          Friedman test (Statistics)
          Case studies
          Comparative studies
          Data analysis software
          Transducers
          Inter-observer reliability
      ab: Purpose: This study was divided into two parts. Study 1 aimed to investigate how dual-task and select background noise conditions impact language production of neurologically healthy adults (NHA). Study 2 aimed to use the sample from Study 1 to identify whether four people with mild aphasia perform at an expected level when compared with their NHA peer group. Method: Study 1 examined the spoken language production of NHA in sustained, selective, and divided attention conditions during a story retell task. NHA participant groups consisted of 21 young and midlife adults (26-54 years), 19 early older adults (55-69 years), and 20 late older adults (70-85 years). Study 2 used a case series approach to investigate how the language production of four people with aphasia (PWA) compared to their respective NHA group. All participants retold stories in a silent baseline condition, three background noise conditions (cocktail party, conversation, phone call), and one dual-task condition (tone discrimination). Language production measures (language informativeness, lexical diversity, lexical--phonological errors, speech rate, disfluent verbalizations), tone discrimination accuracy and response time, and perceived effort and stress were compared across groups and conditions. Results: Study 1 revealed that the language of late older adults was significantly less efficient than the other two groups, that both late and early older adults produced more disfluent verbalizations than young and midlife adults, and that late older adults demonstrated more lexical diversity than early older adults. The tone discrimination accuracy and response time of late older adults were also significantly lower than those of young and midlife adults. Across groups, language informativeness decreased and lexical--phonological errors increased during the dual-task condition, and lexical diversity decreased while lexical--phonological errors and disfluent verbalizations increased during the phone call condition. Costs to tone discrimination accuracy, tone discrimination response time, perceived effort, and perceived stress were found in the dualtask condition across groups. In Study 2, four PWA showed impaired language production when compared with their age-matched NHA group across multiple dependent variables with somewhat unique responses for each participant. Ultimately, three of the four showed some degree of interference in the attentionally demanding conditions, whereas one showed some degree of benefit. Conclusions: The findings of Study 1 suggest that some, but not all, measures of spoken language production are impacted by aging, and that selective and divided attention interfere with spoken language production for NHA. Study 2 suggests that although attentional demands may disproportionately affect error production for many PWA, some may also experience benefits to their spoken language during attentionally demanding conditions. These findings emphasize the importance of individualized evaluation of the impact of everyday communication environments for PWA. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.31804207
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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