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Updated: Jul 16, 2026

An Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effects of Ageing on Sentence Processing
Published on: October 25, 2019
Reading comprehension in aging: the role of working memory and metacomprehension
Rossana De Beni1, Erika Borella, Barbara Carretti
1Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy. rossana.debeni@unipd.it
Abstract:
This study examines age-related differences in reading comprehension analyzing the role of working memory and metacomprehension components in a sample of young (18-30 years), young-old (65-74 years), and old-old (75-85 years) participants. Text comprehension abilities were measured by a standardized test, including two texts: a narrative and an expository text. The elderly's reading comprehension performance, when compared to the norm, emerged to be adequate. More specifically, the young-old showed an equivalent level of comprehension as the young adults for the narrative text. However, a clear age-related decline was found in the case of the expository text. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that working memory capacity, as well as different metacomprehension components but not age, are the key aspects in explaining the different patterns of changes in the comprehension of narrative and expository texts.
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