The effects of physical and social activity on the elderly's ability to detect sarcasm

Sarcasm is a very prevalent form of complex language. However, sarcasm may be lost on the listener. The listener may experience a breakdown in processing for various reasons. One reason may be that neural processing is slowed or diminished, especially in the aged mind. The purpose of this study is to determine what effects normal age related changes have on the elderly's ability to detect sarcasm especially in regard to physical and social activity levels. Fourteen elderly test subjects were compared to 7 young college aged control subjects. Sarcasm was determined solely by the contradictory nature of the utterances. Results revealed that although there was not a difference between the active and inactive test groups there was a significant difference between the test groups and the control group.