Prosody-syntax interactions in aging: event-related potentials reveal dissociations between on-line and off-line...

This study used ERPs to determine whether older adults use prosody in resolving early and late closure ambiguities comparably to young adults. Participants made off-line acceptability judgments on well-formed sentences or those containing prosody-syntax mismatches. Behaviorally, both groups identified mismatches, but older subjects accepted mismatches significantly more often than younger participants. ERP results demonstrate CPS components and garden-path effects (P600s) in both groups, however, older adults displayed no N400 and more anterior P600 components. The data provide the first electrophysiological evidence suggesting that older adults process and integrate prosodic information in real-time, despite off-line behavioral differences. Age-related differences in neurocognitive processing mechanisms likely contribute to this dissociation.