Poor coherence in older people's speech is explained by impaired semantic and executive processes.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Hoffman P
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6150697 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Poor coherence in older people's speech is explained by impaired semantic and executive processes.
Hoffman Paul P Loginova Ekaterina E Russell Asatta A
eLife 20180904
The ability to speak coherently is essential for effective communication but declines with age: older people more frequently produce tangential, off-topic speech. The cognitive factors underpinning this decline are poorly understood. We predicted that maintaining coherence relies on effective regulation of activated semantic knowledge about the world, and particularly on the selection of currently relevant semantic representations to drive speech production. To test this, we collected 840 speech ...[more]
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