Discourse in healthy old-elderly adults: A longitudinal study

This longitudinal study investigated discourse abilities in 16 normal adults in their 80s and 90s at two separate testing times. The discourse tasks evaluated macro-level processing of narratives as manifested on retells, summaries, gists, and morals, and in explanations of proverbs. The group results showed preservation with increased age on those discourse tasks that required global levels of processing. No significant decreases in performance were found in applying strategies of reduction, generalization, and interpretation, factors associated with preserved discourse function in normal advanced ageing are discussed. The findings have implications for differential diagnosis of dementia and aphasia.