Age differences in rereading

Younger and older adults read a series of expository and narrative passages twice in order to answer comprehension questions. Reading time was used to index attentional allocation to word, textbase, and situation model processing and to assess shifts in the allocation policy from the first to the second reading. Older readers' comprehension was at least as good as that of younger readers. Analysis of reading times suggested that for both genres, older adults allocated more attention to situation model features than younger adults did on the first reading, whereas young and old allocated attention similarly to this level of representation on the second reading, suggesting that mature readers may give greater priority to situation model construction when first encountering text. Also, for both genres, older adults showed relatively less facilitation than the young in word-level processing in rereading, suggesting that representation at this level is not as firmly established during reading or decays more quickly for older readers. For narrative texts only, this pattern also obtained for textbase processing. Collectively, these data show that age equivalence in text comprehension at the molar level may be accomplished through different processing routes at the molecular level.     

Self-regulated reading in adulthood

Young and older adults read a series of passages of 3 different genres for an immediate assessment of text memory (measured by recall and true/false questions). Word-by-word reading times were measured and decomposed into components reflecting resource allocation to particular linguistic processes using regression. Allocation to word and textbase processes showed some consistency across the 3 text types and was predictive of memory performance. Older adults allocated more time to word and textbase processes than the young adults did but showed enhanced contextual facilitation. Structural equation modeling showed that greater resource allocation to word processes was required among readers with relatively low working memory spans and poorer verbal ability and that greater resource allocation to textbase processes was engendered by higher verbal ability. Results are discussed in terms of a model of self-regulated language processing suggesting that older readers may compensate for processing deficiencies through greater reliance on discourse context and on increases in resource allocation that are enabled through growth in crystallized ability.     

Self-initiated object-location memory in young and older adults

The present study explored self-initiated object-location memory in ecological contexts, as aspect of memory that is largely absent from the research literature. Young and older adults memorized objects-location associations they selected themselves or object-location associations provided to them, and elaborated on the strategy they used when selecting the locations themselves. Retrieval took place 30 min and 1 month after encoding. The results showed an age-related decline in self-initiated and provided object-location memory. Older adults benefited from self-initiation more than young adults when tested after 30 min, while the benefit was equal when tested after 1 month. Furthermore, elaboration enhanced memory only in older adults, and only after 30 min. Both age groups used deep encoding strategies on the majority of the trials, but their percentage was lower in older adults. Overall, the study demonstrated the processes involved in self-initiated object-location memory, which is an essential part of everyday functioning.     

Personality Development in Emerging and Young Adulthood: A Study of Age Differences

Early adulthood is a time of substantial personality change characterized by large inter‐individual diversity. To investigate the role of age in this diversity, the present study examined whether emerging adults differ from an older group of young adults in their Big Five personality development. By means of multi‐group latent change modelling, two groups of 16‐ to 19‐year‐olds (n = 3555) and 26‐ to 29‐year‐olds (n = 2621) were tracked over the course of four years and compared regarding four aspects of personality change: mean‐level change, rank‐order change, inter‐individual differences in change, and profile change. In addition, age‐differential socialization effects associated with six first‐time life events were investigated. Analyses revealed substantial age differences in all four aspects of change. As expected, emerging adults showed greater change and diversity in change than young adults. However, the six life events had no age‐differential impact on change in single traits and Big Five profiles. Overall, the results indicate that age differences should be considered even in specific life stages to advance the understanding of personality development. © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Effects of text genre and verbal ability on adult age differences in sensitivity to text structure

The present study examined the effects of verbal ability and text genre on adult age differences in sensitivity to the semantic structure of prose. Young and older adults of low or high verbal ability heard narrative and expository passages at different presentation rates. The results demonstrated that older adults recalled less than younger adults and that age differences in recall were larger for low-verbal adults and expository texts. However, subjects from all groups favored the main ideas in their recalls for both types of passages. The results indicated that adult age similarities in the ability to focus on the main ideas when processing prose was not compromised by the verbal ability of the subjects or the organization of the passages used. However, the results also demonstrate how the characteristics of the learner and the characteristics of the text modulate the size of the age differences observed.     

镜像呈现方式对青年人和老年人汉语阅读过程的影响:眼动研究

拼音文字文本阅读研究发现,同青年人相比,老年人在阅读过程中有更多的跳读发生、向前眼跳幅度更长、回视次数更多。基于这些研究结果,研究者提出了老年人阅读的“风险阅读”策略。为探究在中文阅读过程中老年人的加工特点以及与拼音文字阅读的策略异同,实验采用镜像和正常两种方式呈现文本进行了考察。结果发现,在中文阅读过程中,相较于青年人,老年人的跳读率更低,向前眼跳幅度更小,采用的是一种更为谨慎的阅读策略。在镜像呈现的条件下,老年人与青年人之间的跳读率没有显著差异,在正常呈现的条件下,老年人的跳读率显著低于青年,表明在汉语阅读中老年人采取更加谨慎的阅读策略与其副中央凹加工能力下降,以及汉语与拼音文字两种不同书写系统的基本属性有关。     

Age differences in resolving anaphoric expressions during reading

One crucial component of reading comprehension is the ability to bind current information to earlier text, which is often accomplished via anaphoric expressions (e.g., pronouns referring to previous nouns). Processing time for anaphors that violate expectations (e.g., 'The firefighter burned herself while rescuing victims from the building') provide a window into how the semantic representation of the referent is instantiated and retained up to the anaphor. We present data from three eye-tracking experiments examining older and younger adults' reading patterns for passages containing such local expectancy violations. Younger adults quickly registered and resolved the expectancy violation at the point at which it first occurred (as measured by increased gaze duration on the anaphor), regardless of whether sentences were read in isolation or embedded in a discourse context. Older adults, however, immediately noticed the violation only when sentences were embedded in discourse context, suggesting that they relied more on situational grounding to instantiate the referent. For neither young nor old did prior disambiguation within the context (e.g., stating the firefighter was a woman) reduce the effect of the local violation on early processing. For older readers, however, prior disambiguation facilitated anaphor resolution by reducing reprocessing. These results suggest that (a) anaphor resolution unfolds serially, such that prior disambiguating context does not 'inoculate' against local activation of salient (but contextually inappropriate) features, and that (b) older readers use the situational grounding of discourse context to support earlier access to the antecedent, and are more likely to reprocess the context for anaphor resolution.     

Age differences in resolving anaphoric expressions during reading

ABSTRACT

One crucial component of reading comprehension is the ability to bind current information to earlier text, which is often accomplished via anaphoric expressions (e.g., pronouns referring to previous nouns). Processing time for anaphors that violate expectations (e.g., ‘The firefighter burned herself while rescuing victims from the building’) provide a window into how the semantic representation of the referent is instantiated and retained up to the anaphor. We present data from three eye-tracking experiments examining older and younger adults' reading patterns for passages containing such local expectancy violations. Younger adults quickly registered and resolved the expectancy violation at the point at which it first occurred (as measured by increased gaze duration on the anaphor), regardless of whether sentences were read in isolation or embedded in a discourse context. Older adults, however, immediately noticed the violation only when sentences were embedded in discourse context, suggesting that they relied more on situational grounding to instantiate the referent. For neither young nor old did prior disambiguation within the context (e.g., stating the firefighter was a woman) reduce the effect of the local violation on early processing. For older readers, however, prior disambiguation facilitated anaphor resolution by reducing reprocessing. These results suggest that (a) anaphor resolution unfolds serially, such that prior disambiguating context does not ‘inoculate’ against local activation of salient (but contextually inappropriate) features, and that (b) older readers use the situational grounding of discourse context to support earlier access to the antecedent, and are more likely to reprocess the context for anaphor resolution.     

年老化与文本理解

年老化与文本理解的研究表明,老年人在表层形式和文本基础两个低水平表征上的理解和记忆能力下降,而在情境模型的建构和提取、更新等加工过程中都没有发现由于年老化引起的能力下降。在介绍这些研究的基础上,从情境模型与另两个低水平加工的不同特点和老年人自身的特殊性两个方面分析了老年人在不同层次表征水平加工能力差异的原因。对情境模型水平加工能力保持的潜在机制及相关的影响因素,以及如何弥补在低水平加工中认知能力因年龄而产生的下降等问题还需要进行探讨     

Situation models and aging

Younger and older adults were tested for their ability to process and retrieve information from texts. The authors focused on the construction and retrieval of situation models relative to other types of text representations. The results showed that during memory retrieval, younger adults showed superior memory for surface form and textbase knowledge (what the text was), whereas older adults had equivalent or superior memory for situation model information (what the text was about). The results also showed that during reading, older and younger adults were similar in their sensitivity to various aspects of the texts. Overall, these findings suggest that although there are age-related declines in the processing and memory for text-based information, for higher level representations, these abilities appear to be preserved. Several possibilities for why this is the case are discussed, including an in-depth consideration of one possibility that involves W. Kintsch's (1988) construction-integration model.     

Effects of word frequency and visual complexity on eye movements of young and older Chinese readers

Research using alphabetic languages shows that, compared to young adults, older adults employ a risky reading strategy in which they are more likely to guess word identities and skip words to compensate for their slower processing of text. However, little is known about how ageing affects reading behaviour for naturally unspaced, logographic languages like Chinese. Accordingly, to assess the generality of age-related changes in reading strategy across different writing systems we undertook an eye movement investigation of adult age differences in Chinese reading. Participants read sentences containing a target word (a single Chinese character) that had a high or low frequency of usage and was constructed from either few or many character strokes, and so either visually simple or complex. Frequency and complexity produced similar patterns of influence for both age groups on skipping rates and fixation times for target words. Both groups therefore demonstrated sensitivity to these manipulations. But compared to the young adults, the older adults made more and longer fixations and more forward and backward eye movements overall. They also fixated the target words for longer, especially when these were visually complex. Crucially, the older adults skipped words less and made shorter progressive saccades. Therefore, in contrast with findings for alphabetic languages, older Chinese readers appear to use a careful reading strategy according to which they move their eyes cautiously along lines of text and skip words infrequently. We propose they use this more careful reading strategy to compensate for increased difficulty processing word boundaries in Chinese.     

Assessing text representations with recognition: The interaction of domain knowledge and text coherence

Readers construct at least 2 interrelated mental representations when they comprehend a text: a textbase and a situation model. Two experiments were conducted with recognition memory to examine how domain knowledge and text coherence influence readers' textbase and situation-model representations. In Experiment 1, participants made remember-know judgments to text ideas. Knowledge and coherence interacted to influence remember judgments differently than know judgments. In Experiment 2, the authors used the process-dissociation procedure to obtain recollection and familiarity estimates. Knowledge and coherence interacted to influence recollection estimates but not familiarity estimates. The authors claim that recollection and familiarity can be used as markers of the different processes involved in constructing a textbase and a situation model.     

The Effects of Real-World Knowledge on Text Processing Among Older Adults

In the present study, the effects of knowledge on text processing were investigated among older adults. Past research has shown that knowledge reduces processing time among older readers, however, this finding was based on schematic knowledge. Schematic knowledge is a highly prescribed knowledge that draws on commonly held general world knowledge. Domain knowledge, on the other hand, is specialized real-world knowledge within a particular area (e.g., chess, physics, cooking). Past research has shown that domain knowledge engages additional processing resources among younger adults. If this is true of the elderly, then this type of knowledge may pose a challenge to older adults. Regression analyses were used to investigate word-by-word reading time patterns among high- and low-knowledge older adults. Older high-knowledge readers did in fact increase resource allocation to texts that drew on domain knowledge and in turn showed higher levels of recall. These data suggest that knowledge promotes the productive allocation of processing resources among older adults, thus enabling them to take full advantage of knowledge.     

汉字间空格大小对青年人和老年人阅读的影响：眼动研究

拼音文字阅读的眼动研究发现,老年人会采取一种“风险”阅读策略来弥补因视力和认知的自然老化所造成的阅读困难。本研究通过控制字间空格的大小对青年人和老年人汉语阅读过程的眼动模式进行了比较,结果发现,相比青年人,老年人读得更慢,有更长的注视时间和更多的回视,这些研究结果与拼音文字一致;但更为重要的发现是,相比青年人,老年人有更短的向前眼跳距离,缩小汉语字间空格给老年人阅读造成了更为显著的困难,但扩大字间空格两组被试表现出相似的阅读眼动模式。结果说明,汉语阅读中老年人并不使用拼音文字研究中发现的“风险”阅读策略,反而采用了更为谨慎的策略,原因可能在于,作为拼音文字阅读中的重要视觉线索,空格是影响两种语言下老年人阅读加工策略不同的重要因素。     

Instantiation of general terms in young and older adults

Instantiation of general terms in discourse requires inference from general world knowledge and use of linguistic context to particularize meaning. According to the semantic deficit hypothesis, older adults should be less likely than young adults to generate or to store such inferences. In Experiments 1 and 2 an indirect measure, relatedness judgment, was used to assess immediate comprehension and memory for inferences. In Experiment 3 a direct measure, cued recall, was used to tap memory for inferences. No age differences in immediate or delayed memory were observed in Experiments 1 or 2. In Experiment 3 older adults recalled fewer sentences, but there was no evidence for a specific decrement in storage of inferential material. Older adults are not impaired in ability to draw inferences based on general world knowledge, nor are they more likely than young adults to encode linguistic information in a general, stereotypic fashion.     

Repetition blindness and homophone blindness in young and older adults

We tested age effects on repetition blindness (RB), defined as the reduced probability of reporting a target word following presentation of the same word in a rapidly presented list. We also tested age effects on homophone blindness (HB), in which the first word is a homophone of the target word rather than a repeated word. Thirty young and 28 older adults viewed rapidly presented lists of words containing repeated, homophone, or unrepeated word pairs and reported all of the words immediately after each list. Older adults exhibited a greater degree of RB and HB than young adults using a conditional scoring method that provides certainty that blindness has occurred. The existence of RB and HB for both age groups, and increased blindness for older compared to young adults, supports predictions of a binding theory that has successfully accounted for a wide range of phenomena in cognitive aging.     

Adult age differences in elaborations produced during prose recall

This study focused on adult age differences in the characteristics and quantity of elaborations produced during a prose recall task. Young (M = 24.3 years) and older (M = 67.9 years) adults were tested in 3 same-age, same-gender group size conditions: individual, dyad, and tetrad. Elaborations, which are statements not contained in the text but not inconsistent with it, were divided into 2 major categories. Denotative elaborations included statements that were closely related to the text and filled in gaps in the stories. These elaborations were equally produced by young and older adults and were significantly correlated with gist recall performance. Annotative elaborations were evaluative and interpretive comments. These statements were more frequently produced by older adults but were not correlated with recall performance. Young and older adults had different patterns of annotative elaboration production across group size conditions.     

Sustained-attention capacity in young and older adults

The sustained-attention capacity of young (21-29 years) and older (65-78 years) adults was examined using a high-event rate digit-discrimination vigilance task presented at three levels of stimulus degradation. Increased stimulus degradation led to a reduction in the hit rate and to a greater decline in hit rate over blocks (increased vigilance decrement). Sensitivity (d') declined over blocks only at the highest level of stimulus degradation. Older adults had a lower hit rate and showed greater vigilance decrement than young adults, particularly when stimuli were highly degraded. However, both age groups showed the same pattern of stability in sensitivity when stimulus degradation was moderate, and sensitivity decrement over time when stimulus degradation was high. The results suggest that the process of sustained allocation of capacity--as reflected in temporal changes in sensitivity--operates similarly in young and older adults.     

Orienting task effects on memory for presentation modality in children, young adults, and older adults.

Children (7 to 10 years), young adults (17 to 24 years), and older adults (55 to 77 years) were asked to learn three lists of words that were of mixed modality (half the words were visual, and half the words were auditory). With one list the subjects were asked a semantic orienting question; with another, a nonsemantic orienting question; and with a third, no orienting question. Half the subjects in each age group were also asked to remember the presentation modality of each word. Older adults remembered less information about modality than children and young adults did, and the variation in the type of orienting question--or the lack of one--affected modality identification. However, there was no Orienting Task x Age interaction for modality identification. The results of this study suggest that encoding modality information does not take place automatically--in any age group--but that explanations focusing on encoding strategies and effort are not likely to account for older adults' difficulties in remembering presentation modality.     

Memorability functions as an indicator of qualitative age differences in text recall

An analysis in which the probability of text unit recall for older adults [p(Re/O)] is plotted as a function of this probability for the young [p(Re/Y)] is considered as one way to assess whether there are qualitative differences in text recall for young and old. The application of this relative memorability analysis to previously reported data dealing with the immediate recall of spoken sentences (Stine, Wingfield, & Poon, 1986) revealed that although older adults show qualitative recall similar to younger adults when informational density is low, they show less discrimination among text elements when informational density is increased.