Introduction

Reading aloud is a strategy that has been widely used in the past to test the efficiency of individuals when it comes to self-expression. Many past researchers have found reading aloud to be an effective strategy in testing the vocabulary as well as fluency of individuals. Reading aloud has by so far built up foundational practices such as comprehension skills as well as improved reading habits. However, it is an element that widely varies across individuals of different ages. The entire state of mind of younger individuals cannot be compared to that of older people. The conducted study aimed at investigating the effects of aging on self- correction and error production in speech connection elicited through the task of reading aloud.

Hypothesis

The study hypothesized that older the participants were more likely to produce more errors in a speech during the read-aloud process than younger participants.

Study procedure

Researchers carried out the analysis on 91 participants in total. Among the 91 participants sampled out for the analysis, were fifty six younger participants between the ages of 19 -39 as the control group and thirty five older participants who were cognitively healthy aging between 65 to 79 years as the treatment group (Gollan, and Goldrick 27) Each in this category was given the task of reading aloud at least six paragraphs. In each of the paragraphs were three conditions, which were advancing in difficulty. The first reading article was normal with regular word arrangement. The second article consisted of swapped a noun that is; there was noun shuffling across sentence pairs in every paragraph. The third and final article had been more advanced in the sense that there was an ordered reversal and exchange of each adjacent word after every two sentences (Gollan, and Goldrick 30). These advancements were the backbone of the entire analysis as they were likely to produce an accurate report needed by the researchers to reveal the findings and fulfill the relevance of the study.

Variables

Just like any other experimental analysis, the study also had both dependent and independent variables. In the study, participants were the independent variables since they were the controlling factors of the experiment. On the other hand, the overall outcome of the research analysis was the dependent variable which was likely to change given other factors.

Results and discussion

The study found out that the older participants tended to read aloud slower as compared to the younger participants. They also ended up producing more errors in speech after aging-related benefits were put under control in the knowledge of vocabulary. This result was more evident in the case of reading the normal article (Gollan, and Goldrick 38). They also presented cases of self-corrected errors more than younger participants did. According to the exploratory analysis of error types, the rate of word substitution increased with the advancement in age. For the younger participants; however, the report revealed that younger participants had tended to remove some of the words in the content often then older participants did (Gollan, and Goldrick 40). Powerful vocabulary effects were revealed through the aging pattern deficits.

Conclusion

The findings in the study were in agreement with the study’s hypothesis. Indeed most of the older participants ended up making errors in speech during the read-aloud process. The results obtained from the survey suggested a model on the production of speech which revealed that speech planning is automatic. Self-correction and monitoring require more attention aimed at making speech production intact even during the aging process.

Works Cited

Gollan, Tamar H., and Matthew Goldrick. “Aging Deficits In Naturalistic Speech Production And Monitoring Revealed Through Reading Aloud.”. Psychology And Aging, vol 34, no. 1, 2019, pp. 25-42. American Psychological Association (APA), doi:10.1037/pag0000296. Accessed 3 Mar 2019.