Narrative Reported Speech Interpretation by Older Adults

Visker, OH (2015) Narrative Reported Speech Interpretation by Older Adults. Bachelor's Thesis, Artificial Intelligence.

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Abstract

This study investigates the interpretation of pronouns, by older adults, in a direct speech (Zoidberg said, “I am a doctor”) and indirect speech (Zoidberg said that he was a doctor) environment with a single source narrator. This study also investigates if there is a correlation between the performance of interpreting direct speech and the ability to engage in cognitive inhibition. We hypothesize, based on previous results with children that older adults will perform better in an indirect speech environment compared to a direct speech environment. We also predict that cognitive inhibitory performance will positively correlate with the performance of direct speech interpretation. We tested 14 healthy Dutch-speaking older adults between 64 and 83 in a Stroop task, Digit-span task and a direct and indirect speech interpretation task. We found that older adults performed better in a direct speech than indirect speech, rejecting our first hypothesis. In addition we have found differences between referents. The older adults performed at ceiling with pronouns referring to the reported speaker, in both direct and indirect speech. They performed the worst with pronouns referring to the addressee in indirect speech. No correlation was found between the Stroop interference score and the interpretation accuracy.

Item Type:	Thesis (Bachelor's Thesis)
Degree programme:	Artificial Intelligence
Thesis type:	Bachelor's Thesis
Language:	English
Date Deposited:	15 Feb 2018 08:05
Last Modified:	15 Feb 2018 08:05
URI:	https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/13022

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