No evidence for strategic nature of age-related slowing in sentence processing
- Older adults demonstrate a slower speed of linguistic processing, including sentence processing. In nonlinguistic cognitive domains such as memory, research suggests that age-related slowing of processing speed may be a strategy adopted in order to avoid potential error and/or to spare “cognitive resources.” So far, very few studies have tested whether older adults’ slower processing speed in the linguistic domain has a strategic nature as well. To fill this gap, we tested whether older adults can maintain language processing accuracy when a faster processing speed is enforced externally. Specifically, we compared sentence comprehension accuracy in younger and older adults when sentences were presented at the participant’s median self-paced reading speed versus twice as fast. We hypothesized that an external speed increase will cause a smaller accuracy decline in older than younger adults because older adults tend to adopt self-paced processing speeds “further away” from their performance limits. The hypothesis was not confirmed: TheOlder adults demonstrate a slower speed of linguistic processing, including sentence processing. In nonlinguistic cognitive domains such as memory, research suggests that age-related slowing of processing speed may be a strategy adopted in order to avoid potential error and/or to spare “cognitive resources.” So far, very few studies have tested whether older adults’ slower processing speed in the linguistic domain has a strategic nature as well. To fill this gap, we tested whether older adults can maintain language processing accuracy when a faster processing speed is enforced externally. Specifically, we compared sentence comprehension accuracy in younger and older adults when sentences were presented at the participant’s median self-paced reading speed versus twice as fast. We hypothesized that an external speed increase will cause a smaller accuracy decline in older than younger adults because older adults tend to adopt self-paced processing speeds “further away” from their performance limits. The hypothesis was not confirmed: The decline in accuracy due to faster presentation did not differ by age group. Thus, we found no evidence for strategic nature of age-related slowing of sentence processing. On the basis of our experimental design, we suggest that the age-related slowing of sentence processing is caused not only by motor slowdown, but also by a slowdown in cognitive processing…
Author details: | Svetlana MalyutinaORCiD, Anna LaurinavichyuteORCiDGND, Maria Terekhina, Yevgeniy Lapin |
---|---|
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000302 |
ISSN: | 0882-7974 |
ISSN: | 1939-1498 |
Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30421953 |
Title of parent work (English): | Psychology and aging |
Publisher: | American Psychological Association |
Place of publishing: | Washington |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of first publication: | 2018 |
Publication year: | 2018 |
Release date: | 2021/07/09 |
Tag: | aging; language and aging; processing speed; processing strategies; sentence comprehension |
Volume: | 33 |
Issue: | 7 |
Number of pages: | 15 |
First page: | 1045 |
Last Page: | 1059 |
Funding institution: | Center for Language and Brain, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russian Federation Government Grant [ag. 14.641.31.0004] |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik |
Peer review: | Referiert |