Combined effects of age and hearing impairment on utterances and requests for clarification in spontaneous conversation and a referential communication task.
Rachel J Ellis, Jerker Rönnberg, Charlotta Plejert
PMID 37589337WHAT IT FOUND
Older adults with hearing loss used longer turns in quiet spontaneous chat but asked for more clarification in a second picture task.
The type of conversation changes communication patterns more than hearing status alone. Fatigue may affect later tasks.
Key findings
01In spontaneous conversation, older adults who were hard of hearing used significantly longer utterances than their younger partners without hearing impairment.
02In the second trial of a referential communication task, older adults who were hard of hearing made significantly more requests for clarification than their partners without hearing impairment.
03The type of task affected communication patterns for all participants, with fewer clarification requests in spontaneous conversation than in the referential task.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study was conducted in a quiet room, which does not reflect everyday noisy environments. Participants were unfamiliar with each other, which may change how they manage conversation. The spontaneous conversation always happened before the picture tasks, so fatigue or familiarity could explain differences in the second task. The design cannot separate the effects of age from hearing impairment. The sample was small, with only 11 pairs including a person with hearing loss.
Declared interests
The authors report no conflicts of interest. Funding was provided by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that older adults with hearing loss inherently ask for more clarification. This difference appeared only in the second trial of a specific task, likely due to fatigue, and was not seen in spontaneous conversation or the first trial.