Is Narrative Enhancement Possible in Healthy Aging? A Preliminary Investigation into the Effects of Advanced Training Activities.

Over the past two decades, age-related declines have been documented in both the micro- and macrolinguistic aspects of language processing, adversely affecting discourse production in older adults. The present study investigated the potential for enhancing narrative abilities in healthy aging through the Advanced Cognitive Pragmatic Treatment (Advanced-CPT), an intervention designed to improve narrative and communicative abilities by targeting multiple aspects of social interaction. Nineteen healthy Italian-speaking adults aged 65-86 years participated in the program, which consisted of nine sessions lasting approximately 90 min each. Narrative assessments were conducted before training (T0), immediately after training (T1), and at a three-month follow-up (T2) using standardized tasks based on two single‑scene pictures and two cartoon‑sequence stories, administered individually to each participant. Oral productions were transcribed and analyzed using multilevel discourse analysis. The results revealed significant improvements in both microlinguistic and macrolinguistic skills, particularly through reductions in morphological and local coherence errors. Participants also produced more complete sentences and demonstrated greater lexical informativeness following training. Although total word production decreased at follow-up, this pattern was interpreted as reflecting more efficient communication rather than reduced productivity. Overall, the findings suggest that targeted intervention can enhance narrative abilities in healthy aging and support the potential of structured narrative training to promote communicative competence. These results provide new avenues for enhancing quality of life through structured narrative training interventions.