Processing speed and executive functioning in relation to off-topic verbosity among young adults and older adults.

PURPOSE: Off-topic verbosity (OTV) is a tendency towards excessive, off-topic speech and has been linked with age-related deficits in executive functioning, particularly inhibition. However, there are numerous disagreements within the literature on what constitutes OTV, and there is a further lack of investigation into alternative cognitive explanations for the link between inhibition and OTV. The purpose of this study was to investigate the speech characteristics of OTV in young and older adults as well as to examine whether variations in OTV are better explained by diminished executive functioning or processing speed, as measured by the D-KEFS Stroop test. METHODS: Young adults (n = 65; age 18-28) and older adults (n = 85; age 60-98) completed the D-KEFS Color-Word Interference Test and provided verbal samples of autobiographical episodic and procedural speech. These speech samples were rated on three facets of OTV: tangentiality, egocentrism and quantity of speech. RESULTS: Procedural autobiographical speech was found to best measure age cohort variations in OTV, and higher OTV was associated with poorer Stroop test performance in older adults but not in young adults. In fact, young adults only displayed associations between poorer Stroop performance and a reduction in speech quantity. Finally, processing speed deficits were more associated with increased OTV in older adults than executive functioning. CONCLUSION: These results provide support for links between age-related cognitive decline and OTV, but the results suggest that processing speed may be more implicated than executive functioning.

Development of the Virtual Kitchen Protocol for Prospective Memory: a virtual reality-based measure of everyday prospective memory abilities.

INTRODUCTION: Prospective memory is the ability to remember to accomplish a task at a specified point in the future. While this cognitive ability has a large impact on daily functioning, it is rarely assessed during neuropsychological evaluations. Furthermore, existing clinical prospective memory measures are few in number and have significant limitations, including applicability to everyday functioning and appropriate norming for older adulthood. There are also many gaps in the literature on prospective memory, such as how environmental factors affect performance across the lifespan. METHOD: In the current study, we develop and establish a new virtual reality-based measure of prospective memory, the Virtual Kitchen Protocol for Prospective Memory. Young adults (ages 18-29; n = 56), healthy older adults (ages 60-90; n = 94), and clinical older adults (ages 62-90; n = 30) were compared on their performances on both the developed virtual reality prospective memory test and a parallel paper-and-pencil prospective memory test to investigate the impact of test environment across participant group. RESULTS: The Virtual Kitchen Protocol for Prospective Memory was found to adequately differentiate between young adult, healthy older adult, and clinical older adult populations - suggesting baseline ability for prospective memory assessment in clinical settings with older adults and potential for future improvement of neuropsychological evaluations. Additionally, the developed virtual prospective memory task appeared to mimic environmental factors in everyday life but did not replicate the benefit previously measured in healthy older adults' prospective memory ability in naturalistic settings. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the current study built upon extant knowledge of prospective memory in both normal and abnormal aging, suggesting future directions in replicating familiar home environments. Findings provided additional evidence toward future validation of virtual reality assessment tools in clinical neuropsychological evaluations of cognitive abilities, such as prospective memory, with both healthy and clinical older adult populations.

Loneliness and Off-Topic Verbosity Among Young Adults and Older Adults.

OBJECTIVES: Off-topic verbosity (OTV) refers to prolonged speech that derails from the initial conversational topic by including more loosely associated speech and becoming increasingly more unfocused and distant from the initial topic. Previous research has suggested that, among older adults, loneliness may be associated with greater OTV. The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of the relationship between loneliness and OTV among young adults (n = 62) and older adults (n = 80). METHODS: Participants completed a measure of loneliness and provided speech samples, which were transcribed and rated for OTV. RESULTS: Results indicated some relationship between loneliness and tangentiality of speech, particularly among older adults. DISCUSSION: Overall, loneliness may be associated with greater OTV in older adults, which could further explain the connection between increased loneliness and worse health outcomes in older adulthood.