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Anaphor comprehension in younger and older adults
1Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California.
International Journal of Aging & Human Development
|January 1, 1990
Summary
Language comprehension in older adults remains intact when information is immediately available. However, memory demands impair online comprehension in aging adults, affecting sentence processing speed.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience of Aging
- Psycholinguistics
Background:
- Language comprehension is a complex cognitive process.
- Age-related cognitive changes may impact language processing.
- Previous research suggests potential declines in older adults' comprehension.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate age differences in adult language comprehension.
- To investigate how sentence comprehension speed is affected by age.
- To examine the role of memory in age-related comprehension differences.
Main Methods:
- Three experiments were conducted using sentence pairs with varying relatedness.
- Comprehension rate was measured by reading speed.
- Experiment 3 introduced a memory load by presenting sentences sequentially.
Main Results:
- Young-old and old-old adults read sentences more slowly than young adults across initial experiments.
- Age did not interact with sentence relatedness conditions in Experiments 1 and 2.
- Older adults showed significant deficits in online comprehension when memory was required (Experiment 3).
Conclusions:
- Basic sentence comprehension processes, like matching related terms, are not significantly impaired by age.
- Online language comprehension deficits in older adults emerge when working memory demands increase.
- Age-related declines in language comprehension are context-dependent, particularly influenced by memory load.