Sounds of Healthy Aging: Assessing Everyday Social and Cognitive Activity from Ecologically Sampled Ambient Audio Data

Abstract

As proposed by the healthy aging model of the World Health Organization (2015), participation in social and cognitive activities is important for healthy aging and for understanding individual differences in personality and health trajectories. This chapter introduces a naturalistic observation method for assessing social and cognitive activities in everyday life: Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) – a portable audio recorder that periodically and unobtrusively records ambient sounds and speech in everyday life. Using this method, researchers have reliably and objectively measured social activities (e.g., conversing, engaging in small talk or substantive conversations) and cognitive activities (e.g., reminiscing, planning the future, grammatical complexity) in everyday life. We reviewed studies that examined interindividual and intraindividual differences in these activities. Furthermore, we discussed how this behavioural evidence could help to understand personality and health in old age. In sum, the EAR method offers useful real-life, personality-related data for the healthy aging literature.