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Verbosity and emotion recognition in older adults
Ted Ruffman1, Janice Murray, Jamin Halberstadt
1Department of Psychology, University of Otago, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand. tedr@psy.otago.ac.nz
Psychology and Aging
|June 16, 2010
Summary
Older adults, especially men, talk more than younger adults. For older men, this increased verbosity is linked to difficulty recognizing emotions, suggesting a communication challenge.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Gerontology
- Communication Studies
Background:
- Older adults tend to be more verbose than younger adults.
- General inhibitory difficulties may contribute to increased verbosity in older individuals.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the relationship between verbosity and emotion recognition in older and younger adults.
- To explore if difficulties in deciphering emotional expressions contribute to verbosity in older adults.
Main Methods:
- Studied 60 young adults and 61 older adults.
- Measured verbosity using total talking time, percentage of time on-topic, and extremity of off-topic speech.
- Assessed participants' emotion recognition abilities.
Main Results:
- Older adults (men and women) were significantly more verbose than younger adults across all measures.
- Older men's verbosity was associated with poorer emotion recognition.
- The link between age and verbosity in men was fully explained by their emotion recognition difficulties.
Conclusions:
- Increased verbosity in older adults, particularly men, may stem from challenges in perceiving and interpreting social-emotional cues.
- Difficulty in emotion recognition appears to be a key factor mediating the age-related increase in verbosity for older men.
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