Phonological Production and Perception in Later Life

Older adults have diverse social environments and daily functioning, yet sociolinguists have rarely explored how this diversity impacts the language use of adults aged 65-85.

The few existing studies have not tackled the complexities of separating the role of social factors (e.g. isolation, intergenerational contact) from the roles of age-related physiological and cognitive changes affecting speech production and perception in later life (e.g. hearing loss, muscle weakening, slowed mental processing).

My study will be the first to address this gap comprehensively.

I will develop a new methodology for reliably disentangling the role of social, physiological, and cognitive factors on the production and perception of speech sounds in adults aged 65-85. I will use non-invasive biomarkers to measure participants' physiological functioning. Standardised tests and questionnaires from gerontology will establish participants' cognitive and social functioning.

A series of carefully controlled and designed tasks will generate speech production and perception data.

Quantitative analyses will establish which phonological behaviours are associated with which aspects of later-life diversity.

My results will have important methodological and theoretical ramifications for later-life language research, as well as implications for the improvement of older adults' lives in clinical and non-clinical settings.