Time course of indirect reply comprehension in the young and older adults: an event-related potential study

TL;DR

This study shows that older adults struggle more than younger adults with understanding indirect speech, as revealed by brain activity patterns.

Contribution

The study reveals age-related differences in the timing of neural responses during pragmatic inference processing.

Findings

Younger participants were more accurate than older participants in interpreting indirect replies.

Both age groups showed increased N400 effects for indirect replies in late stages of processing.

Younger adults exhibited stronger N400 effects in early and middle stages, which older adults lacked.

Abstract

In verbal communication, speakers often use implicit utterances that need listeners to interpret via pragmatic inference. As individuals age, their ability to make efficient and accurate pragmatic inferences may decline, leading to communication difficulties.

This study examined the cognitive aging phenomenon of pragmatic inference and its neural mechanisms using EEG recordings.

Participants were presented with dialogues involving direct and indirect replies and were required to judge the speaker's intended meaning based on the context.

Younger participants outperformed older participants in task accuracy for indirect replies. Both groups exhibited an increased N400 for indirect replies in the late stages of reply presentation. However, younger participants exhibited greater N400 effects in the early and middle stages, something notably absent in older participants.

These findings suggest that older adults have a reduced ability to make pragmatic inferences, likely due to difficulties in dynamically enriching semantic content in real-time speech.

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