Influence of age and schooling in written discourse of healthy adults

Abstract

Background: Discourse production is a very complex cognitive task that requires the integration of several linguistic cognitive skills. Socio-demographic factors such as schooling can impact on cognitive tasks. This study investigated the impact of age and schooling in some macrolinguistic and microlinguistic aspects in the written discourse of healthy adults. Methods: Individuals with no previous history of language, hearing, neurological, or psychiatric disorders were asked to write a story based on a figure that showed a "bank robbery." A total of 463 graphic narrative were analyzed. The schooling was stratified into the following three bands: 5 to 8 years, 9 to 11 years and 12 or more, and the age ranged from 19 to 75 years. Results: Individuals with high schooling (12 years or more) produced discourses with more information units, more coherent, and cohesive. The oldest group (60 to 75 years) needed more time to finish the written production. Conclusion: The schooling influences some micro and macrolinguistic aspects in the written discourse production. A higher educational level provided a greater number of words as well as a higher number of information units, and the discourses produced are more coherent and cohesive. The age influenced only the time of discourse production.

Language skills differences between adults without formal education and low formal education

“…Therefore, for this process to function effectively, inferences must be created (Bower & Morrow, 1990). These inferences can be explained as mental representation formed through interaction between explicit linguistic information and world knowledge held by the individual (Alonso, 2004;Zanichelli, Fonseca, and Ortiz, 2020). These inferences aid the construction and comprehension of discourse (Alonso, 2004) and depend on the world knowledge held by the individual and might explain why, during this test, the discourse produced tended to be based on the individ-ual´s personal experiences of the world/everyday life when the meaning of the image could not be grasped, resulting in stories unrelated to the theme presented.…”

“…With regard to language, many previous studies (Ortiz et al, 2006 ; Ortiz & Costa, 2011 ; Radanovic et al, 2004 ) involving language assessment have confirmed that education influences linguistic performance. Education not only influences written tasks (Radanovic et al, 2004 ; Soares & Ortiz, 2009 ) and more complex tasks (Zanichelli et al, 2020 ) as might be expected, but also impacts oral-based tasks (Mansur et al, 2005 ), such as comprehension of complex sentences (Ortiz & Costa, 2011 ; Ortiz et al, 2006 ), repetition of pseudo-words and phrases (Ortiz et al, 2006 ) and verbal fluency (Meguro et al, 2001 ).…”

Digital Assessment of Acquired Alexia and Agraphia: On the Relevance of Written Discourse

“…Narratives, such as those generated by describing picture stories or personal experiences, or semidirected interviews (cf. Zanichelli et al, 2020), are not very frequent in written form. Other forms of discourse, such as conversations, are becoming more common in written form, e.g., email correspondence or chat communication (e.g., Dietz et al, 2011;Grotlüschen et al, 2020).…”

“…In thinking about (written) discourse, we need to distinguish between different forms, i.e., conversational, procedural, persuasive, personal, descriptive, expository, and narrative discourse (e.g., Dipper and Pritchard, 2017;Zanichelli et al, 2020).…”

Incidence of disfluencies in the discourses of healthy adults

“…Čím mohol byť tento rozdiel zapríčinený? Ak vychádzame z toho, že osoby s vyšším vzdelaním majú bohatšiu slovnú zásobu (Simos et al, 2011) a produkujú tak informatívnejšie diskurzy (Le Dorze a Bédard, 1998; Zanichelli et al, 2020) mohli by sme uvažovať, že počas produkcie diskurzu venujú osoby s vyšším vzdelaním viac pozornosti výberu vhodných lexikálnych prostriedkov a ich prispôsobeniu príbehu, rovnako ako podaniu čo najviac a najpresnejších informácií, preto sa môžu počas svojho prejavu na jednom slove (a v ňom na jednej slabike) zaseknúť, čo ale mieru ich plynulosti narúša iba minimálne.…”