Older Adults Show Intraindividual Variation in the Use of Predictive Processing

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Linguistics

Background:

• Prediction aids language comprehension by preactivating word features.
• Resolving prediction errors requires cognitive resources.
• Older adults often rely on passive comprehension rather than prediction.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if older adults consistently use passive comprehension or if they predict words during reading.
• To examine the cognitive processes involved in prediction and prediction error resolution in older adults.

Main Methods:

• A cross-task conflict paradigm was employed with younger and older adults.
• Participants read sentences ending in expected or unexpected words.
• Flanker stimuli (congruent/incongruent) followed sentences to assess cognitive control.

Main Results:

• Unexpected words generally showed similar reading times to expected words, but with more very slow trials.
• Older adults showed increased cognitive control (faster responses to incongruent flankers) when encountering slowly processed unexpected words.
• Both age groups exhibited different processing for a subset of unexpected words.

Conclusions:

• Older adults possess the ability to predict and engage cognitive resources to manage prediction errors.
• Older adults do not consistently utilize prediction strategies during reading.
• Findings suggest a flexible, rather than consistently passive, approach to language processing in older adults.