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Updated: Jun 22, 2026
04:30
An Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effects of Ageing on Sentence Processing
Published on: October 25, 2019
Random noun generation in younger and older adults
Herbert Heuer1, Markus Janczyk, Wilfried Kunde
1IfADo–Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, Dortmund, Germany. heuer@ifado.de
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2006)
|June 27, 2009
Summary
Older adults show impaired inhibition of prepotent responses but enhanced strategic attention for randomness, suggesting more controlled response selection with age.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience of Aging
Background:
- Executive functions undergo age-related changes.
- Previous studies on random letter generation showed older adults produce more prepotent responses.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine age-related changes in executive functions using random noun generation.
- To investigate how aging affects inhibition and strategic attentional processes.
Main Methods:
- Participants performed a random noun generation task.
- Analysis focused on prepotent responses, repetition avoidance, and local evenness.
Main Results:
- Older adults produced more prepotent responses (same category nouns) than younger adults.
- Contrary to prior findings, older adults showed stronger repetition avoidance and local evenness.
- These results indicate impaired inhibition but strengthened strategic attentional processes in older adults.
Conclusions:
- Higher adult age is associated with impaired inhibition of prepotent responses.
- Strategic attentional processes, like applying randomness heuristics, are strengthened with age.
- Response selection becomes more controlled in older adults compared to younger adults.
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