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Updated: Jan 26, 2026
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Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks
Published on: September 5, 2019
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Evidence against preserved syntactic comprehension in healthy aging
Charlotte Poulisse1, Linda Wheeldon2, Katrien Segaert1
1School of Psychology.
Summary
Older adults show declines in syntactic comprehension, performing slower and less accurately on grammar tasks than younger adults. This age-related decline is more pronounced when semantic cues are absent.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Linguistics
Background:
- Previous research indicated no significant age-related decline in syntactic processing.
- Syntactic comprehension is crucial for language understanding.
- Working memory and semantic processing can influence syntactic task performance.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate age-related differences in elementary syntactic comprehension.
- To examine the role of semantic information in syntactic processing across age groups.
- To determine if syntactic abilities decline in healthy aging.
Main Methods:
- Comparison of syntactic agreement error detection in young and older adults.
- Use of minimal sentences with real verbs and pseudoverbs to isolate syntactic processing.
- Measurement of response speed and accuracy.
Main Results:
- Older adults were slower and less accurate than younger adults in detecting syntactic agreement errors.
- Age-related decline in accuracy was smaller for pseudoverb sentences compared to real verb sentences.
- Age-related decline in speed was larger for pseudoverb sentences.
Conclusions:
- Elementary syntactic processing abilities decline in healthy aging.
- Syntactic comprehension deficits in older adults are exacerbated in the absence of semantic support.
- Processing speed capacity is positively related to syntactic performance in older adults.
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