Effects of chronological age on native and nonnative sentence processing
- While much attention has been devoted to the cognition of aging multilingual individuals, little is known about how age affects their grammatical processing. We assessed subject-verb number-agreement processing in sixty native (L1) and sixty non-native (L2) speakers of German (age: 18-84) using a binary-choice sentence-completion task, along with various individual-differences tests. Our results revealed differential effects of age on L1 and L2 speakers' accuracy and reaction times (RTs). L1 speakers' RTs increased with age, and they became more susceptible to attraction errors. In contrast, L2 speakers' RTs decreased, once age-related slowing was controlled for, and their overall accuracy increased. We interpret this as resulting from increased L2 exposure. Moreover, L2 speakers' accuracy/RT patterns were more strongly affected by cognitive variables (working memory, interference control) than L1 speakers'. Our findings show that as regards bilinguals' grammatical processing ability, aging is associated with both gains (inWhile much attention has been devoted to the cognition of aging multilingual individuals, little is known about how age affects their grammatical processing. We assessed subject-verb number-agreement processing in sixty native (L1) and sixty non-native (L2) speakers of German (age: 18-84) using a binary-choice sentence-completion task, along with various individual-differences tests. Our results revealed differential effects of age on L1 and L2 speakers' accuracy and reaction times (RTs). L1 speakers' RTs increased with age, and they became more susceptible to attraction errors. In contrast, L2 speakers' RTs decreased, once age-related slowing was controlled for, and their overall accuracy increased. We interpret this as resulting from increased L2 exposure. Moreover, L2 speakers' accuracy/RT patterns were more strongly affected by cognitive variables (working memory, interference control) than L1 speakers'. Our findings show that as regards bilinguals' grammatical processing ability, aging is associated with both gains (in experience) and losses (in cognitive abilities).…
| Verfasserangaben: | Jana ReifegersteORCiD, Rebecca Jarvis, Claudia FelserORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.104083 |
| ISSN: | 0749-596X |
| ISSN: | 1096-0821 |
| Titel des übergeordneten Werks (Englisch): | Journal of memory and language |
| Untertitel (Englisch): | evidence from subject-verb agreement in German |
| Verlag: | Elsevier |
| Verlagsort: | Amsterdam [u.a.] |
| Publikationstyp: | Wissenschaftlicher Artikel |
| Sprache: | Englisch |
| Datum der Erstveröffentlichung: | 06.01.2020 |
| Erscheinungsjahr: | 2020 |
| Datum der Freischaltung: | 14.12.2023 |
| Freies Schlagwort / Tag: | aging; attraction errors; second-language processing; sentence processing; subject-verb agreement |
| Band: | 111 |
| Aufsatznummer: | 104083 |
| Seitenanzahl: | 23 |
| Fördernde Institution: | Alexander-von-Humboldt-Professorship; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation |
| Organisationseinheiten: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
| DDC-Klassifikation: | 4 Sprache / 43 Deutsch, germanische Sprachen allgemein |
| 4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik | |
| Peer Review: | Referiert |
