Verification of prosodic aspects in elderly subjects with cognitive integrity

• Grant number: 11/19013-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2011
• End date: November 30, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Speech Therapy
• Principal Investigator: Ana Maria Schiefer
• Grantee: Juliana Boza Saurim
• Host Institution: Escola Paulista de Medicina (EPM). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus São Paulo. São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

There is a natural decline of functional abilities related to language accuracy, fluency, vocal quality, and communicative effectiveness, as senescence comes. It is important to ascertain how the prosodic elements corroborate the textual elements in the construction of persuasion in the oral speech of the elderly, helping to characterize this function in this population. Also with aging, there is a degeneration process of speech rate due to the instability in motor control. The evolutionary profile of speech fluency by age group analyzed by speech rate shows that speech rate performs a seasonal variation of the acquisition, development, stability, and degeneration of fluency standards and that there is a decrease in utterance rate with the advance of age. Method: CEP: 1081/11. It will be selected 30 elderly individuals, both genders, aged between 65 and 79 years, from the community and the Academic League of Geriatrics and Gerontology - UNIFESP, without communication complaints and who achieve adequate scores in the Mini Assessment Test Mental State Examination-MMSE, demonstrating no cognitive impairment. The corresponding segment will be applied in prosodic aspects of the Communication Assessment Battery-MAC for this linguistic function. The assessment of this function will be checked through speech rate by means of spontaneous speech of individuals.(AU)