Aging and resolution of quantifier scope effects

Two experiments were conducted to compare young and older adults' processing of complex sentences involving quantifier scope ambiguities. Young adults were hypothesized to use a mix of syntactic processing strategies to interpret sentences such as Every actor used a prop or An actor used every prop. Older adults, particularly those with limited working memories, were hypothesized to rely on a simple pragmatic principle. Participants read the quantifier sentences and judged whether a continuation sentence "made sense." Reading times for the quantifier sentences and decision times and continuation sentence acceptability judgements were analyzed. Whereas young and older adults exhibited similar patterns of reading times for the quantifier sentences, they preferred different continuations for the Every ... a quantifier sentences. As predicted, both young adults and older adults interpreted a quantifier sentence such as An actor used every prop as referring to a single entity resulting in a preference for continuations such as The actor was on the stage. In contrast, young and older adults made different interpretations of a quantifier sentence such as Every actor used a prop; young adults preferred continuations postulating multiple entities such as The props were on the stage whereas older adults, particularly those with working memory limitations, preferred continuations with a single entity such as The prop was on the stage. These results support models of the effects of aging on language processing in which immediate syntactic analysis is not affected by aging or working memory limitations whereas postcomprehension processes are affected by aging and/or working memory limitations.     

The Effect of Plausibility on Sentence Comprehension Among Older Adults and its Relation to Cognitive Functions

Background/Study Context: Older adults show age-related decline in complex-sentence comprehension. This has been attributed to a decrease in cognitive abilities that may support language processing, such as working memory (e.g., Caplan, DeDe, Waters, & Michaud, 2011,Psychology and Aging, 26, 439–450). The authors examined whether older adults have difficulty comprehending semantically implausible sentences and whether specific executive functions contribute to their comprehension performance.

Methods: Forty-two younger adults (aged 18–35) and 42 older adults (aged 55–75) were tested on two experimental tasks: a multiple negative comprehension task and an information processing battery.

Results: Both groups, older and younger adults, showed poorer performance for implausible sentences than for plausible sentences; however, no interaction was found between plausibility and age group. A regression analysis revealed that inhibition efficiency, as measured by a task that required resistance to proactive interference, predicted comprehension of implausible sentences in older adults only. Consistent with the compensation hypothesis, the older adults with better inhibition skills showed better comprehension than those with poor inhibition skills.

Conclusion: The findings suggest that semantic implausibility, along with syntactic complexity, increases linguistic and cognitive processing loads on auditory sentence comprehension. Moreover, the contribution of inhibitory control to the processing of semantic plausibility, particularly among older adults, suggests that the relationship between cognitive ability and language comprehension is strongly influenced by age.     

Emotional valence impacts lexical activation and inhibition differently in aging: an emotional Hayling task investigation

Background: Aging is characterized by cognitive changes such as a potential inhibition deficit. However, growing evidence shows that positive valence stimuli enhance performances in older adults to a greater degree than in younger adults. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of the emotional valence of words on lexical activation and inhibition in aging by using a new Emotional Hayling Task. Methods: Thirty-eight younger adults (mean age = 20.11 years) and 38 older adults (mean age = 66.47 years) performed a computerized Emotional Hayling task. Participants had to choose the correct (initiation part) or incorrect (inhibition part) final words of highly predictable incomplete sentences. Final words had a negative or positive emotional valence and were paired for reaction time comparison with neutral words. Results: Response times were faster in younger adults than in older adults in both the initiation and the inhibition parts. In addition, response times indicated that older adults initiated more slowly negative than neutral words while no differences emerged in inhibition. No differences were obtained between negative and neutral words in younger adults. Response times showed faster initiation and inhibition for positive than for neutral words in both age groups. Conclusion: These data are consistent with previous findings suggesting a disengagement from the processing of negative versus neutral words in older adults when compared with younger adults. A possible explanation is that activation of negative words in the mental lexicon is weaker in older than in younger adults. Conversely, the positive valence of words seems to enhance both activation and inhibition processes in both young and older adults. These findings suggest that positive stimuli can improve performance.     

老年人汉语阅读时知觉广度的眼动变化

目的 探讨老年人在汉语阅读中的知觉广度.方法 采用呈现随眼动变化技术,设定的可视窗口分为6个水平(无预视、R1、R2、L1R1、L1R2和整行条件),以双字词组成的句子作为阅读材料,对18名老年人在汉语阅读中的知觉广度进行研究.结果 ①在确定知觉广度左侧范围的比较中,各眼动指标差异均不显著;②在确定知觉广度右侧范围的比较中,无预视条件与R2条件在阅读时间、注视次数、阅读速度上差异显著,R1与R2条件在各指标上均不显著.结论 ①老年人汉语阅读知觉广度的范围为注视点及注视点右侧1个词;②老年人汉语阅读知觉广度具有不对称性.     

Adult age differences in cross-modal recoding and mental tempo, and older adults' utilization of compensatory task conditions

Free recall performance of younger and older adults was examined in three modes of presentation: visually presented sentences, auditorily presented sentences, and bimodally (visually + auditorily) presented sentences. For all modes, the sentences were presented at slow or fast rates. The main result was a three-way interaction between age, mode, and rate. The younger adults performed at the same level in all three modes at a slow rate of presentation, and at a higher level in the bimodal task than in the unimodal tasks at a fast rate of presentation. The elderly, on the other hand, performed at the highest level in the bimodal task regardless of rate of presentation. In addition, the younger adults outperformed the elderly in all mode by rate combinations; however, attenuated age differences in recall were observed for the bimodally presented sentences at a slow presentation rate. It is suggested that the adult aging process is associated with deficits in cross-modal recoding and rate of processing. Finally, the capability of older adults to utilize compensatory task conditions is discussed.     

Language processing, slowing, and speed/accuracy trade-off in the elderly

Previous studies have suggested that longer response times in older adults could be partly due to increased caution in responding, with a propensity to emphasize accuracy to the detriment of speed. A study was carried out in 30 young and 30 older adults in order to determine whether shifting the response criterion relative to the speed/accuracy trade-off towards a more risky strategy would significantly reduce age-related differences in response time. The experimental procedure involved the detection of incongruous sentences, either with or without a mnemonic preload. Instructions emphasized alternatively speed or accuracy. Results showed that whatever the instructions, older adults remained consistently much slower than young adults, and a little more accurate. When instructed to emphasize speed, they never managed to reduce the response time difference relative to young adults. It is concluded that the more cautious approach in older adults is required to attenuate the adverse effects of a slower processing system.     

Age differences in sentence production

Two experiments have been completed using experimental techniques to study language production under controlled conditions. In Experiment 1, young and older adults were given two, three, or four words and asked to compose a sentence. Older adults' responses were similar to those of young adults when given two or three words. When given four words, the older adults made more errors and their responses were shorter and less elaborate than those of the young adults. In Experiment 2, simple intransitive verbs (smiled), transitive verbs (replaced), and complement-taking verbs (expected) were contrasted. The responses of older adults were similar to those of young adults given intransitive and transitive verbs. Given complement-taking verbs, young adults produced complex sentences, whereas the older adults produced simpler, less complex sentences; the older adults also made many errors. Both experiments found that older adults respond more slowly than young adults.     

The effect of age and individual differences in attentional control: a sample case using the Hayling test

Individual differences in working memory (WM) have been shown to reflect the ability to control attention in order to prevent interference. This study examines the role of WM capacity in resisting interference in the Hayling task, in samples of younger and older adults. In each age group, high and low WM span individuals had to complete high-cloze sentences with either expected words (initiation) or words providing no meaning to the sentences (interference). Results showed increased response times and decreased correct responses in interference, as compared to initiation. As interference increased, older adults demonstrated lower accuracy than younger ones. Further, low spans demonstrated higher interference costs than high spans on accuracy, while the reverse pattern was found for response times. Our findings suggest that both age and individual differences in WM capacity need to be considered to account for differences in the ability to resist to interference.     

Older adults filter irrelevant information during metaphor comprehension

In general, older adults are less likely than younger adults to inhibit irrelevant information when reading literal text (Hasher & Zacks, 1988). Are older adults also less likely to inhibit irrelevant information during metaphor comprehension? Young (mean age 19.2 years) and older adults (mean age 73.6 years) participated in a timed property-verification task. Although the older adults were generally slower than the younger, they displayed the same pattern of data. After reading metaphors, both groups verified metaphor-relevant properties more quickly after a metaphor prime than after a literal control prime, whereas metaphor-irrelevant properties were responded to more slowly after metaphor primes, relative to the controls. These results suggest that older adults, like younger ones, enhance metaphor-relevant properties and filter out metaphor-irrelevant properties during metaphor comprehension. Older adults' metaphor comprehension processes thus seem intact. Mechanisms for filtering out metaphor-irrelevant information are considered.     

Aging Effects on the Visual Span for Alphabetic Stimuli

Background: The visual span (i.e., an estimate of the number of letters that can be recognized reliably on a single glance) is widely considered to impose an important sensory limitation on reading speed. With the present research, we investigated adult age differences in the visual span for alphabetic stimuli (i.e., Latin alphabetic letters), as aging effects on span size may make an important contribution to slower reading speeds in older adulthood.

Method: A trigram task, in which sets of three letters were displayed randomly at specified locations to the right and left of a central fixation point, was used to estimate the size of the visual span for young (18–30 years) and older (65+years) adults while an eye tracker was used to ensure accurate central fixation during stimulus presentation. Participants also completed tests of visual acuity and visual crowding.

Results: There were clear age differences in the size of the visual span. The older adults produced visual spans which were on average 1.2 letters smaller than the spans of young adults. However, both young and older adults produced spans smaller than those previously reported. In addition, span size correlated with measures of both visual acuity and measures of visual crowding.

Conclusion: The findings show that the size of the visual span is smaller for older compared to young adults. The age-related reduction in span size is relatively small but may make a significant contribution to reduced parafoveal processing during natural reading so may play a role in the greater difficulty experienced by older adult readers. Moreover, these results highlight the importance of carefully controlling fixation location in visual span experiments.     

Sentence Comprehension in Older Adults: Evidence for Risky Processing Strategies

Background/Study Context: Previous research has suggested that older adults compensate for age-related declines in sentence comprehension ability by reading more slowly. The purpose of this study was to investigate the hypothesis that older adults adopt a riskier strategy than younger adults, in which they rely on expectations based on probabilistic cues.

Methods: Older and younger adults read late closure sentences in a self-paced reading task (e.g., “When the waiter served the woman the food was still too hot.”). The subordinate verbs varied in whether or not they occurred in ditransitive constructions (served vs. kissed).

Results: Older adults showed less evidence of processing disruptions at the ambiguous noun phrase (the food) than younger adults. At the main verb, the older and younger adults showed evidence of processing disruption in the same conditions, but the processing disruptions were greater in older adults.

Conclusion: The results are interpreted as support for the hypothesis that older adults adopt “risky” strategies during sentence comprehension.     

Age and inhibition: the retrieval of situation models

We present a test of whether age-related differences in the management of interference during memory retrieval can be explained, at least in part, by decreased inhibitory mechanisms in older adults. We conducted this test by measuring the ease of retrieval of situation model representations that were sources of interference on the preceding trial but that contained the target information for the current trial. Prior research has shown that situation model retrieval under these conditions exhibits inhibition relative to an unrelated control. This effect was replicated in the current study for younger but not older adults; at the same time, the older adults showed greater overall retrieval interference than the younger adults. This pattern is consistent with the idea that there are declines in inhibitory processing in older adults, and that this applies to memory retrieval.     

Attentional and perceptual contributions to the identification of extrafoveal stimuli: adult age comparisons

Gerontological researchers have been cautioned that conclusions about age differences in attention may have been inferred from data that, in fact, reflected age differences in perceptual processing of stimuli falling outside the fovea (Cerella, 1985). Presumably, the experimental manipulations on which Cerella based his caution induced a broad focus of attention so that changes in perceptual processing would not be confounded with changes in attention. Experiment 1 tested this by comparing a condition similar to Cerella's with another in which attention was narrowly focused at fixation. The results replicated Cerella's findings. In addition, there were greater age differences when attention had been narrowly focused, showing that attentional effects can be separated from the effects reported by Cerella. Experiment 2 showed that age differences in extrafoveal perception could be removed by increasing the duration of the target from 200 to 2000 ms, suggesting that the perceptual deficits in older adults are due to differentially lengthened processing of stimuli outside the fovea.     

The effects of varying task priorities on language production by young and older adults

The present study compared how varying task priorities affected young and older adults' language production. Both young and older adults responded to monetary incentives to vary their performance when simultaneously talking and tracking a pursuit rotor. Tracking performance improved when they were rewarded for tracking and declined when they were rewarded for talking. Both young and older adults also spoke more slowly when rewarded for tracking and more rapidly when rewarded for talking. Young produced less complex sentences when rewarded for tracking and produced more complex sentences when rewarded for talking. However, older adults did not vary their grammatical complexity as a function of monetary incentives. These results are consistent with prior studies suggesting that older adults use a simplified speech register in response to dual-task demands.     

The Effects of Varying Task Priorities on Language Production by Young and Older Adults

The present study compared how varying task priorities affected young and older adults' language production. Both young and older adults responded to monetary incentives to vary their performance when simultaneously talking and tracking a pursuit rotor. Tracking performance improved when they were rewarded for tracking and declined when they were rewarded for talking. Both young and older adults also spoke more slowly when rewarded for tracking and more rapidly when rewarded for talking. Young produced less complex sentences when rewarded for tracking and produced more complex sentences when rewarded for talking. However, older adults did not vary their grammatical complexity as a function of monetary incentives. These results are consistent with prior studies suggesting that older adults use a simplified speech register in response to dual-task demands.     

Are older adults more attuned to morally charged information?

Whereas older adults typically show declines in various cognitive processes, they also typically demonstrate greater interest in social relationships. Part of this increased focus on interpersonal relations may extend to morality, which by its very nature is concerned with social contracts, obligations, and the give-and-take among people. The authors tested whether in comparison to younger adults, older adults show increased activation and memory for morally charged information relative to nonmoral information. Three experiments examined older and younger adult comprehension and memory of moral content in stories. Participants read stories and were tested for surface form, textbase, and situation model recognition memory. In contrast to past studies that have not focused on moral content, in this study older adults had textbase memory for moral information equal to that of young adults, suggesting an enhanced attention to morally charged details. To examine online moral inference making, Experiment 2 used lexical decision probes. There was greater facilitation of moral inferences for older adults relative to younger adults, suggesting greater focus of processing on moral content. Experiment 3 explored methodological issues to resolve some discrepancies between the experiments, and replicated the basic findings. In general, older adults had enhanced memory for morally charged story events and, relative to younger adults, were more likely to draw moral inferences during comprehension.     

Extending the Reach of an Evidence-Based Theatrical Intervention

Whereas older adults typically show declines in various cognitive processes, they also typically demonstrate greater interest in social relationships. Part of this increased focus on interpersonal relations may extend to morality, which by its very nature is concerned with social contracts, obligations, and the give-and-take among people. The authors tested whether in comparison to younger adults, older adults show increased activation and memory for morally charged information relative to nonmoral information. Three experiments examined older and younger adult comprehension and memory of moral content in stories. Participants read stories and were tested for surface form, textbase, and situation model recognition memory. In contrast to past studies that have not focused on moral content, in this study older adults had textbase memory for moral information equal to that of young adults, suggesting an enhanced attention to morally charged details. To examine online moral inference making, Experiment 2 used lexical decision probes. There was greater facilitation of moral inferences for older adults relative to younger adults, suggesting greater focus of processing on moral content. Experiment 3 explored methodological issues to resolve some discrepancies between the experiments, and replicated the basic findings. In general, older adults had enhanced memory for morally charged story events and, relative to younger adults, were more likely to draw moral inferences during comprehension.     

Pictorial illustrations enhance memory for sentences in younger and older adults

In these studies, the authors examined the effects of verbal and pictorial illustrations on younger and older adults' recall of the content of short sentences. During acquisition, base and elaborated sentences were presented under one of three encoding conditions: (a) sentences only; (b) sentences with matching pictures; (c) incomplete sentences with matching pictures. At test, participants recalled the main action of the sentences. Base sentences were recalled more often than elaborated sentences when strict scoring criteria were used. However, older adults showed a recall advantage for elaborated sentences compared to base sentences when lenient scoring criteria were applied. Positive effects of pictorial illustrations occurred for both age groups. Implications for the design of instructional formats to improve older adults' retention of textual material are discussed.     

One voice too many: adult age differences in language processing with different types of distracting sounds.

An experiment is reported that investigated factors that might contribute to age differences in the ability to process spoken language under conditions of competition from various types of background noise. Age differences in recall of spoken sentences were shown to depend on the type of background noise as well as its intensity. Increased intensity levels of just one competing speaker produced differentially greater impairment in older adults than in young adults. Analyses showed that listening performance was predicted not only by individual differences in hearing ability but also by speed of processing, which underscores the combined role of age-related auditory and cognitive changes in processing spoken language.