People

Graduate Advisor & Senior Scientist, Gerontology Center
Roberts Distinguished Professor of Psychology
785-864-0748
skemper@ku.edu

Related Links
Language across the Life Span: http://www2.ku.edu/~kugeron/sklab/
Department of Psychology: http://www.psych.ku.edu/

Research Interests
With support from the National Institute on Aging since 1985, I have gone from studying how older adults' working memory limitations affected their production and comprehension, especially of complex syntax, to the study of how to enhance comprehension through "elderspeak," a special speech register targeted at older adults. I've also done some work examining how dementia, especially Alzheimer's disease, effects older adults' language and together with other researchers involved in the Nun Study, we examined early language abilities as a predictor of late-life cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease. Currently, my students and I are studying how processing limitations affect older adults' language production and comprehension, age differences in the structure of verbal abilities, effects of aging on eye movement patterns while reading, and the use of elderspeak in intergenerational discourse. Abstracts of recent publications and descriptions of work in progress can be found at the website Language Across the Lifespan.

Selected Publications

Snowdon, D. A., Kemper, S., Mortimer, J. A. Greiner, L. H. , Wekstein, D. R., Markesbery, W. R. (1996).  Cognitive ability in  early life and cognitive function and Alzheimer's disease in  late life:  Findings from the Nun Study. Journal of the American Medical Association, 275, 528-532.

Kemper, S., & Harden, T. (1999). Experimentally Disentangling What's Beneficial about Elderspeak from What's Not.  Psychology and Aging, 14, 656-670.

Kemper, S. & Sumner, A. (2001).  The structure of verbal abilities in young and older adults.  Psychology and Aging, 16, 312-322.

Kemper, S., Thompson, M., & Marquis, J. (2001).  Longitudinal change in language production:  Effects of aging and dementia on grammatical complexity and propositional content.  Psychology and Aging, 16, 600-614. 

Kemper, S., Herman, R. E., & Lian, C. H. T. (2003).  The Costs of Doing Two Things at Once for Young and Older Adults:  Talking while Walking, Finger Tapping, and Ignoring Speech or Noise.  Psychology and Aging, 18, 181-192. 

Kemper, S., Crow, A., & Kemtes, K. (2004).  Eye fixation patterns of high and low span young and older adults:  Down the garden path and back again.  Psychology and Aging, 19, 157-170.

Kemper, S., & Liu, C. – J.  (2007).  Eye movements of young and older adults during reading.  Psychology and Aging, 22, 84-94.