Off Topic Verbosity! This is a bonafide (I did not make this up) condition. It has been noted that aging adults often suffer from not picking up on the emotional cues of a listener and can speak, well, ...ad nauseam on topics completely unrelated to the conversation at hand! I think I know people who aren’t even aging who suffer from this syndrome! And the worst combination is when these people get behind a pulpit.
But a Canadian study did affirm that it is older people who ramble off topic more than younger adults. The study attributes this problem to a decline in their ability to inhibit irrelevant information in their memory system as they age.
There is other research that suggests that it’s not because older people can’t control their speech, but suspects that the goal of speech changes as we age, and older people are more interested in finding significance from life events.
Still, this tendency for some older adults to drift to irrelevant topics during conversation has me afraid of aging. As if not being able to read without glasses isn’t bad enough, now I have to worry about incessant off topic verbosity too! Yikes!
