Filtered text reveals adult age differences in reading: evidence from eye movements

Sensitivity to certain spatial frequencies declines with age and this may have profound effects on reading performance. However, the spatial frequency content of text actually used by older adults (aged 65+), and how this differs from that used by young adults (aged 18-30), remains to be determined. To investigate this issue, the eye movement behavior of young and older adult readers was assessed using a gaze-contingent moving-window paradigm in which text was shown normally within a region centered at the point of gaze, whereas text outside this region was filtered to contain only low, medium, or high spatial frequencies. For young adults, reading times were affected by spatial frequency content when windows of normal text extended up to nine characters wide. Within this processing region, the reading performance of young adults was affected little when text outside the window contained either only high or medium spatial frequencies, but was disrupted substantially when text contained only low spatial frequencies. By contrast, the reading performance of older adults was affected by spatial frequency content when windows extended up to 18 characters wide. Moreover, within this extended processing region, reading performance was disrupted when text contained any one band of spatial frequencies, but was disrupted most of all when text contained only high spatial frequencies. These findings indicate that older adults are sensitive to the spatial frequency content of text from a much wider region than young adults, and rely much more than young adults on coarse-scale components of text when reading.