Cognitive and autonomic factors in speech motor control: Effects of the aging process

TL;DRAbstract

The primary purposes of this study were to determine the effects of cognitive load and autonomic arousal on the speech motor control of healthy older adults and healthy younger adults as well as to advance our understanding of potential age-related changes in the relationship between cognitive, autonomic, and speech motor processes. Eight healthy older adults and eight healthy younger adults completed a novel experimental paradigm in which a Stroop task was embedded within a sentence production task. Participants produced multiple repetitions of sentences in each of two Stroop conditions, congruent and incongruent. The incongruent Stroop condition represented an increase in cognitive load, compared with that associated with the congruent Stroop condition. Articulatory kinematic, autonomic, and acoustic signals were simultaneously collected as participants completed the experimental task. In addition, several forms of perceptual and behavioral data were collected to supplement the physi

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