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Updated: Apr 17, 2026

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment
Published on: June 25, 2019
Semantic Richness and Aging: The Effect of Number of Features in the Lexical Decision Task
Christelle Robert1, Liliana Rico Duarte2
1Laboratoire de Psychologie, Santé et Qualité de Vie EA4139, University of Bordeaux, 3 place de la Victoire, 33076, Bordeaux, France. Christelle.Robert@u-bordeaux.fr.
Abstract:
The aim of this study was to examine whether the effect of semantic richness in visual word recognition (i.e., words with a rich semantic representation are faster to recognize than words with a poorer semantic representation), is changed with aging. Semantic richness was investigated by manipulating the number of features of words (NOF), i.e., the number of characteristics that describe the meaning of words. Half of the words had a high NOF and the other half had a low NOF. Young adults (19.6 years) and older adults (66.3 years) performed a lexical decision task. An interaction was found between age group and NOF on word latencies. More precisely, a facilitatory effect of NOF was observed for the young adults, but not for the older ones. These data are consistent with the assumption of an age-related decline in feedback activation from semantics to orthography.
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