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Updated: Jun 14, 2025

An Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effects of Ageing on Sentence Processing
Published on: October 25, 2019
Taking the Extra Listening Mile: Processing Spoken Semantic Context Is More Effortful for Older Than Young Adults
Tami Harel-Arbeli1,2,3, Hagit Shaposhnik4, Yuval Palgi1
1Department of Gerontology, Haifa University, Haifa, Israel.
Objectives:
Older adults use semantic context to generate predictions in speech processing, compensating for aging-related sensory and cognitive changes. This study aimed to gauge aging-related changes in effort exertion related to context use.
Design:
The study revisited data from Harel-Arbeli et al. (2023) that used a "visual-world" eye-tracking paradigm. Data on efficiency of context use (response latency and the probability to gaze at the target before hearing it) and effort exertion (pupil dilation) were extracted from a subset of 14 young adults (21 to 27 years old) and 13 older adults (65 to 79 years old).
Results:
Both age groups showed a similar pattern of context benefits for response latency and target word predictions, however only the older adults group showed overall increased pupil dilation when listening to context sentences.
Conclusions:
Older adults' efficient use of spoken semantic context appears to come at a cost of increased effort exertion.
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