CHANGES IN COGNITIVE PROCESSING ACROSS THE LIFE SPAN AS MEASURED BY SHIFTS IN LATERALIZATION WITH VOICE RECOGNITION.
Item
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Title
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CHANGES IN COGNITIVE PROCESSING ACROSS THE LIFE SPAN AS MEASURED BY SHIFTS IN LATERALIZATION WITH VOICE RECOGNITION.
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Identifier
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AAI8713754
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identifier
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8713754
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Creator
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DEVENNY, DARLYNNE ADA.
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Contributor
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Gerald Turkewitz
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Date
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1987
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Developmental
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Abstract
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A series of studies was conducted to investigate cognitive organization across the life span from age 5 through to old adulthood. Cognitive organization was measured by hemispheric differences in processing while subjects were engaged in a dichotically presented voice recognition task. Since voice recognition is a complex stimulus it was anticipated that subjects would employ different strategies depending on their familiarity with the voices and changes in lateralization would be the consequence of using different strategies. The data, therefore, were analyzed in blocks of trials over the course of the task. Proficiency was measured by error rate, lateralization by an index of ear advantage, and the relationship between them by correlations.;It was found that 5 year old subjects performed only at chance level. Subjects at ages 10, 15 and young adults improved over the course of the task. Old adults performed better than chance but did not improve with familiarity to the voices. Across ages, performance on the task improved with increasing age from age 10 through to young adults with old adults performing poorer than age 10 subjects.;Within each age group there was no significant direction of lateralization. However, when subjects at each age were divided into two sub-groups based on the direction of ear advantage at the end of the first third of the task (24 trials) it was found that there were individual differences in lateralization which were masked when all subjects were combined. For age 10 and age 15, beginning the task with an initial left ear advantage and maintaining this lateralization was associated with improvement over the task. This suggests that for these ages maintaining a consistent strategy while performing a complex task is beneficial. For young adults, both sub-groups shifted lateralization to the opposite hemisphere; the shifts in lateralization were associated with significant improvement. Both sub-groups of old adults showed only weak lateralization and, although they shifted lateralization towards the end of the task performance, did not improve.;Correlations of lateralization with error scores indicated that greater lateralization was associated with greater proficiency but only for young adults did most correlations reach significance.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Psychology
