Prosodic Perception in Aging Individuals: a Focus on Intonation

摘要: Studies indicate that older adults have diminished ability to decode prosodic information. However, the precise nature and basis of this deficit proved difficult uncover. Although prosody itself is poorly understood, one its components, intonation, has been shown be context-dependent. The present study sought determine whether intonation perception problems for aging individuals are related stimulus contextual factors. In two experiments, younger were asked identify emotional (happiness, sadness) nonemotional meanings signaled by intonation. Stimuli used sentences with basic (Experiment 1) non-basic 2) word order. Those conveying either accompanied or unaccompanied performed comparably on all tasks in Experiment 1 except identification sadness decontextualized stimuli. By contrast, their performance 2 not only fell below across board, but it also differed according emotion type. Both groups better decoding contextualized than These findings suggest might factors including syntax. They discussed terms neurobiological factors, particularly age changes brain.