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Age and context effects in lexical decision: an age by context interaction
1Boston University School of Medicine, MA.
Experimental Aging Research
|January 1, 1988
Summary
Older adults show stronger word priming effects than younger adults in a lexical decision task. This suggests older individuals utilize context more when word predictability is low.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience of Aging
- Experimental Psychology
Background:
- Lexical decision tasks are common for studying word recognition.
- Priming effects, where exposure to one word influences the response to a subsequent word, are well-documented.
- Previous research often shows reduced priming effects in older adults.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate age-related differences in priming effects.
- To examine how category dominance influences priming in older and younger adults.
- To explore the role of context utilization in age and priming.
Main Methods:
- Participants: 36 older adults and 36 younger adults.
- Task: Lexical decision task with category primes and exemplar targets.
- Manipulation: Varying category dominance to alter target word predictability.
Main Results:
- Older adults exhibited significantly greater priming effects compared to younger adults.
- This finding contrasts with typical results in age and priming research.
- The effect was observed even when target predictability was limited.
Conclusions:
- Older adults may leverage contextual information more effectively than younger adults, especially in low-predictability scenarios.
- This suggests a potential compensatory strategy in older adults' cognitive processing.
- Further research is needed to understand the mechanisms behind this age-related difference in context use.