Experimentally disentangling what's beneficial about elderspeak from what's not

Three studies evaluated different varieties of elderspeak using a referential communication task. Experiment 1 compared the effects of syntactic simplifications and semantic elaborations. Experiment 2 contrasted syntactic simplifications and prosodic exaggerations. Experiment 3 contrasted 2 different syntactic simplification strategies and 2 different prosodic exaggerations. Providing semantic elaborations and reducing the use of subordinate and embedded clauses benefit older adults and improve their performance on the referential communication task, whereas reducing sentence length, slowing speaking rate, and using high pitch do not. The use of short sentences, a slow rate of speaking, and high pitch resulted in older adults' reporting more communication problems. These experiments validate a version of elderspeak that benefits older adults without sounding patronizing and insulting.     

On the surface structure of infinitive-complement sentences

Linguists' inability to reach consensus about the surface structure of infinitive-complement sentences with verbs likebelieve is a consequence of unresolved foundational disputes about the nature of generative grammar. Naive native speakers' linguistic intuitions about sentences of this type, as assessed by elicitation of judgments about surface structure, also fail to provide a solution to this problem. Insofar as we have no way of deciding on the surface structure ofbelieve-type infinitive-complement sentences, click-displacement results with these materials cannot be used to support either a surface-structure account or a deep-structure account of the parsing of sentences in the process of comprehension.This research was supported in part by Grant MH 08520-12 from the National Institute of Mental Health.The order of appearance of the names of the first and second authors was determined by a flip of a coin.     

The Epidemiology of Homicide followed by Suicide: A Systematic and Quantitative Review

This systematic review of population based studies of homicide followed by suicide was conducted to examine the associations between rates of homicide‐suicide, rates of other homicides and rates of suicide. The review analysed 64 samples, including the case of an outlier (Greenland) that were reported in 49 studies. There was a significant association between the rates of homicide‐suicide and those of other homicides in studies from the U.S.A. Outside the U.S.A. there was no clear association between homicide‐suicide and other homicide but there was modest but significant association between rates of suicide and homicide‐suicide. Homicide‐suicide appears to be closer in epidemiological terms to homicide than suicide in regions with high rates of homicide and measures to reduce homicide in these regions may also reduce homicide‐suicide.     

Tracking Reading: Dual Task Costs of Oral Reading for Young Versus Older Adults

A digital pursuit rotor was used to monitor oral reading costs by time-locking tracking performance to the auditory wave form produced as young and older adults were reading out short paragraphs. Multilevel modeling was used to determine how paragraph-level predictors of length, grammatical complexity, and readability and person-level predictors such as speaker age or working memory capacity predicted reading and tracking performance. In addition, sentence-by-sentence variation in tracking performance was examined during the production of individual sentences and during the pauses before upcoming sentences. The results suggest that dual tasking has a greater impact on older adults’ reading comprehension and tracking performance. At the level of individual sentences, young and older adults adopt different strategies to deal with grammatically complex and propositionally dense sentences.     

The Effects of Aging and Dual Task Demands on Language Production

ABSTRACT

A digital pursuit rotor task was used to measure dual task costs of language production by young and older adults. After training on the pursuit rotor, participants were asked to track the moving target while providing a language sample. When simultaneously engaged, young adults experienced greater dual task costs to tracking, fluency, and grammatical complexity than older adults. Older adults were able to preserve their tracking performance by speaking more slowly. Individual differences in working memory, processing speed, and Stroop interference affected vulnerability to dual task costs. These results demonstrate the utility of using a digital pursuit rotor to study the effects of aging and dual task demands on language production and confirm prior findings that young and older adults use different strategies to accommodate to dual task demands.     

Current status of knowledge on the changes in the hypothalamo-hypophyseo-adrenal cortex system and their effects in chronic alcohol use and withdrawal

The results of investigations into the changes in the function of the hypothalamus-hypophysis-renal gland system in chronic alcoholics are collated. The review shows that the activity of the hypothalamus-hypophysis-renal gland system is below-normal in at least some alcoholics, but due to conflicting results, it is not possible to decide whether the hypofunction of the adrenal gland is a primary of a secondary effect. The interrelationship between glucocorticosteroids and catecholamines is described and its importance for the adaptability of the organism is stressed. On the basis of the review it may seem advisable to introduce corticosteroid treatment into the therapeutic schema for delerious alcoholic patients and also to apply it on patients with the alcohol withdrawal syndrome if tests show that the function of their hypothalamus-hypophysis-renal gland systems is impaired.     

Comprehension and the interpretation of proverbs

The comprehension of proverbs was investigated in a series of four experiments. These experiments used unfamiliar proverbs like Thick ice and thin ice look the same from a distance. Experiments I–III compared reaction time latencies for literal and figurative uses of the proverbs after paragraphs of two lengths. In all three experiments, the longer paragraphs facilitated comprehension of the proverbs and figurative uses of the proverbs were understood more rapidly than literal uses. In the final experiment, literal uses of the proverbs were understood more rapidly than figurative uses when the proverbs followed single word cues.This research is based on portions of a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Graduate School of Cornell University. This research was supported by N.I.M.H. Training Grant 5-T01-MH08520-15, to the Department of Psychology, Cornell University. I with to thank Ulric Neisser, Dennis Micham, John S. Bowers, Carl Ginet, Ragnar Rommetveit, Lynn A. Cooper, and Lorraine Bahrick for their advice and assistance.