Chapter 4

Question 1

Ageing and Language

Introduction

Answer 1

• Almost always cross-sectional studies
• Overlaps
• Still big variances

Question 2

The role of reading in older peoples lifestyles

Answer 2

• Typical intellectual engagement (TIE): measure of willingness to engage in cognitively demanding activities  reading is key predictor of level of TIE
• Health literacy: ability to access and use health care information reducing mortality and increasing quality of life
• 10% of ppl 77+ could not read instruction on medicine container
• Elders read easy light material

Question 3

Physical constraints

Answer 3

• Worse eye sight, physical decline
• Predictable words are usually skipped when reading not when listening to audiobook
• Hearing loss causes decline in memory, ability to follow conversation,
• Vocal output generally poorer in elder ppl
• Handwriting changes
• Writing speed decreases

Question 4

General cognitive constraints

Answer 4

• Reading speed odes not change
• Little change in exe movement
• Older need to re-check complex texts more often
• Older have slower processing speed, compensate for it by skipping over predictable words
• Garden path sentences: sentences that appear to be saying one thing but at certain point it becomes clear that other meaning is intended
• Older more dependent on heuristics to compensate for declines in basic skills
• Inhibitory deficit hypothesis: age-related decline in inhibition will cause specific problems with any mental process were inhibition is used
• Pursuit rotor task
• Some skills immune to cognitive decline

Question 5

Word recognition

Answer 5

• Lexical decision: deciding if a group of letters forms a word
• Naming latency: how quickly participants can read a word aloud
- no differences in age groups
• Morphological processing: processing of word structure remains intact in later life
• Ratcliffe Diffusion model: older adults slower at some aspects of processing but adopted more conservative decision criteria
• Age differences in peripheral rather than central mental processes
• Semantic facilitation
• Hearing words: old not affected by orthographic frequency (taupe, soupe)
• Loss of grey matter could account for poor performance in word recognition

Question 6

Spelling

Answer 6

• Old Bad at retrieving misspelled words from memory

* Age decline in production of words spelling mistakes increase with age

Question 7

• Transmission deficit hypothesis

Answer 7

concepts are stored in interconnected “nodes”, ageing weakens connections, new info prone to inefficient processing than older info, recognition easier than recall

Question 8

Tip of the tongue states

Answer 8

• Retrieval of memory

Question 9

Pronunciation

Answer 9

• No age differences

* National Adult Reading Test (NART) quick assessor of crystallized intelligence

Question 10

Semantic processing

Answer 10

(what words mean) declines with age
• Less precise definitions etc
• Due to decline in frontal lobe functioning
• Maybe result of other factors
• Relatively basic semantic processes age resistant

Question 11

Syntactic processing

Answer 11

• Decline
• Yngve Depth: complex technique that gives a syntactic complexity score t a phrase or sentence  declines with age, well correlated with digit span (.76)
• The better the memory, the better the syntax
• Wrap up: when one sentence ends and another starts, reading slows down, the more complex the sentence, the bigger the slowing down
• Young: more details
• Verbosity
• Diaries: language used became simpler over lifespan
• Anaphoric reference: e.g. referring to “he” without specifying which of two previously cited males is meant
• Regression hypothesis: do older ppl regress to a childlike linguistic state

Question 12

Story comprehension

Answer 12

• Older remember less, generalize more
• Allocation policy: “cut suit according to cloth”
• Maybe decline begins earlier
• Cohort effects
• Old lower comprehension of humor
• Studies do not reflect rl no age differences in naturalistic tasks

Question 13

Neural compensation

Answer 13

• Changes in neural responses to incoming auditory signals

* Event related potentials (ERT): listening to auditory stimuli Young: left hemisphere, old: right hemisphere

Question 14

Summary

Answer 14

• Declines in sight and hearing will affect linguistic skills
• Shift to lightweight reading
• General slowing, declining intelligence, changing of reading habits
• Crystallized intelligence may not play major role
• Age related declines in word recognition, syntactic processing, story recall
• Inflated by experimental artefacts (materials, cohort effects,…)
many reading tests are unrealistic