Chapter 12: Adolescent and Adult Language

Question 1

TRUE or FALSE

With aging, there is a slow decline in both oral and written language comprehension, understanding syntactically complex sentences, and inferencing

Answer 1

TRUE

• Decline may be related to either overload or processing difficulties in working memory
• The ability to explain figurative expressions does decline in older adults
• The elderly have more difficulty with linguistic processing that requires greater organization
• In general, the elderly are more sensitive to theme or underlying meaning but are less able than young adults to recall syntax

Question 2

TRUE or FALSE

Mature language is less efficient and less appropriate than child language

Answer 2

FALSE

• Mature language is more efficient and appropriate than child language
• It is efficient because words are more specifically defined and because forms do not need repetition or paraphrasing in order to be understood
• It is appropriate because utterances are selected for the psychosocial dynamics of the communication situation

Question 3

Which of the following is FALSE about text comprehension in adults

1. Surface text or wording
2. Description or context
3. Integration of the text with one’s own background knowledge

Answer 3

2 is FALSE

1. ​​Surface text or wording
2. Meaning or context
3. Integration of the text with one’s own background knowledge

Question 4

TRUE or FALSE

Working memory affects the ability to tell and interpret narratives in older adults

Answer 4

TRUE

• The ability to process surface text and meaning, with older adults performing less well than younger
• Older adults may be less sensitive to the details presented in the text
• Decline in working memory may also explain why the narratives of cognitively healthy seniors in their 70’s and 80’s have fewer clauses in their utterances and fewer cohesive ties (irrelevant content)

Question 5

TRUE or FALSE

Styles of speaking are socially conditioned and characterized by differences in syntactic complexity, word choice, phonological form, and the phonetic realization or clarity, and speed of speech

Answer 5

TRUE

• We might switch to a slower, clearer speaking style if the other person is very old

Question 6

Which of the following is TRUE about how style shifting (changing from one style to another) is determined?

A. Social Proximity

B. Context

C. Story-telling

Answer 6

B is TRUE

A. Social Distance

B. Contex

C. Listener feedback

• Style shifting in adults is rapid and unconscious
• Ex. 2 year olds do not change speaking styles in the way that adults do

Question 7

TRUE or FALSE

In conversations, adolescents frequently gaze at their partner (especially during listening), nod and show neutral and positive facial expressions, use feedback, and give contingent responses

Answer 7

TRUE

• Management of peer interactions becomes increasingly important for peer acceptance and notions of self-worth
• The diversity of communication partners increases as adolescents and young adults enter the workforce or pursue higher education

Question 8

TRUE or FALSE

Verbal feedback occurs on approximately 80% of teen utterances and includes words such as yeah, so yeah, and uh-huh

Answer 8

FALSE

• Verbal feedback occurs on approx 20% of teen utterances
• Words such as yeah, so yeah, and uh-huh indicate aggreement with or understanding of the previous utterance and encouragement to continue
• Teens rarely show negative emotions, turning away, requests for clarification, or failure to answer questions in conversations with peers

Question 9

TRUE or FALSE

Resource allocation does affect sentence processing

Answer 9

TRUE

• Auditory distractions negatively affected judgements of grammatical correctness in narrative tasks among typical young adult females
• Distractions had less effect in more explicit, deliberate tasks, like self-paced reading

Question 10

Which of the following is FALSE about Grammatical judgement

A. Speaker’s SES

B. Education

C. Proficiency

D. Primary language

E. Favorite food

Answer 10

E is FALSE

• E is Intelligence

Question 11

TRUE or FALSE

Males and Females have more similarities than differences in their language use

Answer 11

TRUE

• Factors such as context and topic have a greater influence on conversational style than gender
• Other differences may be physiological (size of vocal tract, thickness of vocal cords)

Question 12

Which of the following is TRUE of the conversational style of women

• A. Tend to be indirect
• B. Seek consensus
• C. Listen carefully
• D. Assume role of conversational facilitators

Answer 12

All of the following are TRUE about the conversational styles of women

• Women face their conversational partners, giving vocal or verbal feedback and often finishing their listener’s thought
• Women sit closer and may touch during converation
• Women see conversations as a way to share; intimacy is built through talking
• Topics are often shared at length and explored thoroughly, more focused and less diffuse compared to that of boys’ or men

Question 13

Which of the following is FALSE about the conversational style of men?

• A. Tend to lecture and may seem inattentive to women
• B. Act as information providers
• C. See conversations as an opportunity to share and build bonds
• D. Consider conversations as events in which talk maintains status and independence

Answer 13

C is FALSE

• C. See conversations as an opportunity for debate or competition, and thus act combative
• The goal of conversation becomes “scoring” on one’s opponent and protecting oneself
• In order to score, a man may dismiss the topic and, by association, the conversational partner as trivial or unimportant
• Men typically interrupt to suggest alternative views, to argue, to introduce new topics, or to complete the speaker’s sentence

Question 14

TRUE or FALSE

In men-female conversations, only about 36% of indirectly introduced topics by females become the focus of conversation whereas 96% of male introduced topics are sustained

Answer 14

TRUE

• Although cultural variations can make these statistics vary

Question 15

TRUE or FALSE

Typical seniors experience some deficits in semantic production, primarily in the accuracy and speed of word retrieval and naming

Answer 15

TRUE

• When compared to younger adults, seniors use more indefinite words, such as thing and one in place of specific names
• These deficit reflect accompanying deficits in working memory and, in turn, affect ability to produce grammatically complex sentences

Question 16

TRUE or FALSE

Age, metalinguistic ability, and educational level are not important for the production of well-structured formal definitions

Answer 16

FALSE

• Age, metalinguistic ability, and educational level ARE important for the production of well-structured formal definitions

Question 17

TRUE or FALSE

Acquisition of increasingly abstract thought enables an adolescent to integrate new information into existing knowledge systems

Answer 17

TRUE

• This is accomplished to support the production of dialogues, such as conversations, and with increased maturity, the production of social monologues

Question 18

TRUE or FALSE

The density and variety of nouns and noun phrase types does not increase dramatically in adolescence

Answer 18

FALSE

• The density and variety of nouns and noun phrase types does increase dramatically in adolescence and on into adulthood
• B/c older children do not repeat the same word over and over as do infants and toddlers, the greater density of nouns means more variety and higher linguistic complexity

Question 19

TRUE or FALSE

The changes in types of nouns are affected by linguistic, cognitive, and social development, and by modality (spoken vs. written) and text genre (narrative vs. expository)

Answer 19

TRUE

Question 20

Which of the following is FALSE about the characteristics of how a phoneme varies

1. The phonetic context or the adjacent speech sounds
2. Pragmatic factors, such as interruptions or eye contact

Answer 20

2 is FALSE

• Social factors, such as sexual orientation, class, race, regional dialect, gender, and age is the other variation of a phoneme characteristic

Question 21

TRUE or FALSE

The biggest change in adolescence and adulthood is in executive function

Answer 21

TRUE

• Executive function is the ability to engage actively with print and to write and read with purpose
• It is not until early adulthood, that writers develop the cognitive processes and executive functions needed for mature writing

Question 22

TRUE or FALSE

Family SES does not affect language growth and perfomance

Answer 22

FALSE

• Family SES does affect language growth and perfomance
• Poorer children do not have language skills as high as more affluent children

Question 23

TRUE or FALSE

In the area of speech and language, native language proficiency cannot be obtained when learning begins after puberty

Answer 23

TRUE

• Adults exposed to a second language in early childhood have nativelike accents and intonation
• Those not exposed until adulthood or late adolescence do not achieve nativelike speech