Narrative Discourse in Young and Older Adults: Behavioral and NIRS Analyses

Abstract

Discourse comprehension is at the core of communication capabilities, making it an important component of elderly populations’ quality of life. The aim of this study is to evaluate changes in discourse comprehension and the underlying brain activity. Thirty-six participants read short stories and answered related probes in three conditions: micropropositions, macropropositions and situation models. Using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), the variation in oxyhemoglobin (HbO2) and deoxyhemoglobin (HbR) concentrations was assessed throughout the task. The results revealed that the older adults performed with equivalent accuracy to the young ones at the macroproposition level of discourse comprehension, but were less accurate at the microproposition and situation model levels. Similar to what is described in the compensation-related utilization of neural circuits hypothesis (CRUNCH) model, older participants tended to have greater activation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex while reading in all conditions. Although it did not enable them to perform similarly to younger participants in all conditions, this over-activation could be interpreted as a compensation mechanism.

Age-preserved semantic memory and the CRUNCH effect manifested as differential semantic control networks: An fMRI study

“…Compatible with the CRUNCH expectations, increased activations with relatively maintained performance have been reported in frontoparietal regions in several language studies, however the results are not always consistent. More precisely, in a discourse comprehension study using fNIRS, increased activation was found in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in older adults while performance was mostly equal to their younger counterparts [41]. In a sentence comprehension study, increased activation was observed in both younger and older adults during the more complex sentences in regions such as the bilateral ventral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG)/anterior insula, bilateral middle frontal gyrus (MFG), bilateral middle temporal gyrus (MTG), and left inferior parietal lobe [42].…”

Lower Education and Reading and Writing Habits Are Associated With Poorer Oral Discourse Production in Typical Adults and Older Adults

“…During typical aging, discourse comprehension is relatively spared, while discourse production is affected (Ska et al, 2009;Martin et al, 2018). Oral discourse production, the focus of the present study, can be divided into two main dimensions (van Dijk, 2010).…”

Neuroanatomical correlates of macrostructural receptive abilities in narrative discourse in unilateral left hemisphere stroke: A behavioural and voxel‐based morphometry study

“…At the individual level, knowledge of the topic (Shapiro, 2004) and of discourse genre (narrative versus expository; Clinton et al., 2020; Mar et al., 2021), literacy abilities (Mellard et al., 2010), level of schooling (Mackenzie, 2000), age (Mackenzie, 2000; Martin et al., 2018) and reading/writing habits (Martin et al., 2012) are variables that can influence discourse processing. To date, most studies on narrative comprehension have been conducted with adults from developed countries (e.g., Martin et al., 2018; Whitney et al., 2009; Nicholas & Brookshire, 1995), where education levels are higher than in developing countries according to the education index of the Human Development Reports (United Nations Development Programme, 2020). Since education and SES relate to cognitive (including linguistic) performance, those studies may not be generalizable for lower educated groups, and samples with lower SES.…”