Does Reading-While-Listening Facilitate Reading in Older Adults? Evidence from Eye Movements

Previous research suggests receiving a concurrent auditory version of text during reading, i.e., reading-while-listening, improves eye-movement behavior in less skilled readers, while disrupting skilled reading. We extended this approach to older adults (65+ years) to see whether they benefit similarly. The experiment was conducted in Chinese, comparing young and older adults from an earlier reading-only study with new, closely matched groups presented with the same stimuli in a reading-while-listening task. Stimuli comprised either sentences containing a temporary ambiguity or matched unambiguous control, with plausibility manipulated for control target words and the incorrect interpretation of the ambiguity. At the sentence level, older adults showed differences across reading modes, with faster reading during reading-while-listening, whereas younger adults showed no evidence that reading-while-listening benefited reading, with some evidence it was disruptive. At the word level, both groups produced control-word plausibility effects, but neither showed plausibility effects for ambiguous targets, with no influence of reading mode. The findings suggest differential effects of reading-while-listening, potentially facilitating reading in older adults while yielding no benefit and some disruption in younger adults. As neither group had difficulty processing the ambiguity, no conclusions can be drawn about local ambiguity resolution. Nevertheless, the results suggest possible benefits of reading-while-listening for older adults.