Social behavior and off-target verbosity in elderly people.

Two cross-cultural studies compared beliefs in Asia and Canada about communication in later life. With an expanded version of the Language in Adulthood Questionnaire, respondents rated a young or old adult target on communication skills selected to elicit both negative and positive stereotypes. Chinese, Chinese-Canadian, and Canadian participants were compared in Study 1 while younger and older respondents from South Korea and Canada were contrasted in Study 2. All groups showed negative beliefs about hearing and memory in old age. Positive communication beliefs were also evident for empathy, storytelling and social skills. Participants in Asia showed less stereotyping overall, for both negative and positive beliefs. Significant age interactions in Study 2 reflected positive communication beliefs only for the older participants. In line with recent investigations of the multidimensional impact of Eastern traditions, greater positivity toward older adults was not observed in Asia. This work highlights the importance of assessing both positive and negative age beliefs in cross-cultural comparisons.

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Story asides as a useful construct in examining adults’ story recall.

Bluck

Alea

Baron-Lee

et al. 2016

Psychology and Aging

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Older adults sometimes exhibit higher levels of off-target verbosity during story recall than do young adults. This appears as the inclusion of extraneous information not directly relevant to the topic. Some production of such material has been clearly related to cognitive decline, particularly older adults’ inability to inhibit production of irrelevant information. In tandem, however, research also suggests that some extraneous information is indirectly related to the topic and may reflect age differences in communicative styles. To further elucidate the social cognitive aspect of this issue, the question of import is: What is the content of the additional information provided by participants during story recall? The present study answers this question. Grounded in the autobiographical memory and life story literatures, we introduce the construct, story asides, and a reliable content-analytic scheme for its assessment. Young and older adults (N = 129) recalled one of two types of stories: a personal autobiographical memory or an experimenter-generated fictional story. Narratives were reliably coded for story asides. As expected, older adults produced more story asides than young adults only for autobiographical stories. The discussion focuses on the role of story asides in everyday communication including the possibility that they may be a sign of communicative expertise.

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Social behavior and off-target verbosity in elderly people.

Cited by 12 publications

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Communication Beliefs About Youth and Old Age in Asia and Canada

Story asides as a useful construct in examining adults’ story recall.

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