COMMUNICATION DURING PROSE RECALL CONVERSATIONS BY YOUNG AND OLD DYADS

This study focused on the cooperative processes occurring during colla borative prose recall by adult dyads differing in age (young and old) and relationship (married and unacquainted). Analyses of the content o f the conversations indicate that all groups produced similar proporti ons of story-related and conversation-related productions. At the begi nning of the conversations, individual stimulus-based productions were predominant. The end of the conversations were characterized by incre ased proportions of task discussion, particularly for married couples, and an increase in sociability/support productions by older adults, p articularly older unacquainted dyads. Thus, all groups adopted the arg uably superior strategy of beginning their recall conversations with a n initial surge of individually recalled story information, and it was only at the end of the conversation that group differences in collabo ration strategies were observed.