Social behavior and off-target verbosity in elderly people.

Abstract

This study investigated social behavior in older adults with varying levels of off-target verbosity (OTV). After screening 455 adults in Phase 1, 198 individuals were selected to participate in both a get-acquainted conversation and an experimental cues situation and to complete social and cognitive measures. Higher OTV participants had lower cognitive inhibitory scores, talked more, were less interested in their partners, and focused more on themselves. Their conversational partners were less satisfied. Age and cognitive functioning were not related to OTV scores or conversational style for low- and mid-range participants. Although high-OTV individuals talked less when exposed to social cues signalling boredom, they spoke more relative to other participants. Self-reported social behavior had little relation with OTV and conversational style, but higher OTV individuals were less accurate in judging videotaped social interactions. Gender differences in conversational behavior are also discussed.

Age-related effects on speech production: A review

“…However, this interpretation of age-related increases in verbose speech as due to feelings of isolation is contradicted by the findings of Gold, Andres, Arbuckle, and Schwartzman (1988). They explicitly tested for an association between increased verbosity and psychosocial behaviour and found that older socially outgoing adults were more verbose than older socially more isolated adults (see also Arbuckle & Gold, 1993;Pushkar, Basevitz, Arbuckle, Nohara-LeClair, Lapidus, & Peled, 2000).…”

Off-Target Verbosity, Everyday Competence, and Subjective Well-Being

“…Whether high OTV will also be a direct predictor of lower well-being is an open question. Findings that a high OTV level has a negative impact on aspects of interpersonal relations [5] suggest that it might also have a negative effect on well-being. Alternatively, because OTV in social situations consists largely of personal reminiscences, high OTV may produce positive effects on well-being by giving people greater opportunity to affirm their identities at a time of role losses [9][10][11][12].…”

“…Two studies have supported this model with respect to competence in achieving conversational goals. Individuals showing high levels of OTV in a standardized laboratory interview were less successful in conversing informally with an agematched peer [5] and less efficient in conveying descriptive information about ambiguous stimuli in a referential communication task [2]. The objective of the present study was to examine the more general prediction of the model, namely that a high OTV level is related to diminished everyday competence.…”

Social inappropriateness, executive control, and aging.

“…To minimize the impact of visual search and processing speed on these scores, we regressed each score from Part B on the comparable score from Part A, and the residual from this analysis served as the measure of executive functioning. 1 Both phonemic fluency and the TMT predict off-target verbosity in older adults (Pushkar et al, 2000), suggesting that these measures may tap cognitive operations that are important for social control.…”

“…The Peer-Report Social Functioning Scale (see the Appendix) includes questions that asked participants' peers about the degree to which the participants engaged in a variety of socially inappropriate, appropriate, and prejudicial behaviors. The items in this scale were based on previous research documenting various inappropriate behaviors sometimes displayed by older adults, for example, excessive verbosity (Pushkar et al, 2000), gratuitous argumentation, (Furnham & Pendleton, 1983;von Hippel, 2007), public inquiry about private matters (von Hippel & Dunlop, 2005), and stereotyping and prejudice (von Hippel et al, 2000). Additional items were developed from focus groups of older adults.…”