Effect of education on listening comprehension of sentences on healthy elderly: analysis of number of correct responses and task execution time

Abstract

Purpose To analyze the effect of education on sentence listening comprehension on cognitively healthy elderly. Methods A total of 111 healthy elderly, aged 60-80 years of both genders were divided into two groups according to educational level: low education (0-8 years of formal education) and high education (≥9 years of formal education). The participants were assessed using the Revised Token Test, an instrument that supports the evaluation of auditory comprehension of orders with different working memory and syntactic complexity demands. The indicators used for performance analysis were the number of correct responses (accuracy analysis) and task execution time (temporal analysis) in the different blocks. Results The low educated group had a lower number of correct responses than the high educated group on all blocks of the test. In the temporal analysis, participants with low education had longer execution time for commands on the first four blocks related to working memory. However, the two groups had similar execution time for blocks more related to syntactic comprehension. Conclusion Education influenced sentence listening comprehension on elderly. Temporal analysis allowed to infer over the relationship between comprehension and other cognitive abilities, and to observe that the low educated elderly did not use effective compensation strategies to improve their performances on the task. Therefore, low educational level, associated with aging, may potentialize the risks for language decline.

Sentence Comprehension in Primary Progressive Aphasia: A Study of the Application of the Brazilian Version of the Test for the Reception of Grammar (TROG2-Br)

“…Educational level, socioeconomic status, vocabulary size, and reading and writing habits are factors that may influence language comprehension (and other cognitive functions) in the elderly ( 54 , 79 – 86 ). In the present study, education was positively correlated to accuracy on TROG2-Br corroborating findings of previous studies and suggesting that low educational level, associated with aging, may potentiate the risks for language decline ( 81 ).…”

“…In several studies, gender was not found to play a major role in sentence comprehension ( 37 , 40 , 81 , 83 ) and in other language tasks, such as BNT ( 98 ). In the same direction, in the current study, we found similar performance for men and women.…”

“…Later, in consideration of the influence of schooling, normative scores for the elderly in the Token Test were proposed ( 37 ). Further evidence for the influence of schooling on the Brazilian population was gathered in a recent study that analyzed the performance of 111 cognitively healthy elders in the Revised Token Test ( 81 ). The authors observed that the group of low schooling presented fewer hits than the group of high schooling in all blocks of the test.…”