Abstract
Discourse comprehension is at the core of communication capabilities, making it an important component of elderly populations’ quality of life. The aim of this study is to evaluate changes in discourse comprehension and the underlying brain activity. Thirty-six participants read short stories and answered related probes in three conditions: micropropositions, macropropositions and situation models. Using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), the variation in oxyhemoglobin (HbO2) and deoxyhemoglobin (HbR) concentrations was assessed throughout the task. The results revealed that the older adults performed with equivalent accuracy to the young ones at the macroproposition level of discourse comprehension, but were less accurate at the microproposition and situation model levels. Similar to what is described in the compensation-related utilization of neural circuits hypothesis (CRUNCH) model, older participants tended to have greater activation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex while reading in all conditions. Although it did not enable them to perform similarly to younger participants in all conditions, this over-activation could be interpreted as a compensation mechanism.
Highlights
Comprehension is a basic component of communication
The shorter texts in our study may explain the differences with those studies on the situation model condition, and this will be addressed
This study demonstrated that while older adults find it harder to recall the microstructure or the situation model of a short text, they still manage to properly recall the macrostructure
Summary
Comprehension is a basic component of communication. Understanding the changes in discourse comprehension capacity and in the underlying brain changes during aging is crucial to maintain the elderly population’s quality of life. The aim of this study is to evaluate changes in discourse comprehension and the underlying brain activity. The article is structured in four sections reflecting the way the study was organized in order to reach this aim: (1) the model allowing the discourse analysis on which most of studies are based; (2) results of studies on discourse comprehension, neural substrate and aging; (3) models of cerebral plasticity in aging; (4) near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) technique used to evaluate the cerebral activity during the reading task. The construction-integration model (Kintsch and Van Dijk, 1978; Kintsch, 1988; Lebreton, 2012) describes comprehension as a progressive construction, through many cycles, in which
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