Age differences in memory-load interference effects in syntactic processing.

The effects of a memory load on syntactic processing by younger and older adults were examined. Participants were asked to remember a noun phrase (NP) memory load while they read sentences varying in syntactic complexity. Two types of NPs were used as memory loads: proper names or definite descriptions referring to occupations or roles. The NPs used in the sentence and memory load either matched (e.g., all proper names or all occupations), or they mismatched. Participants read complex sentences more slowly than they did simpler sentences; for young adults, this complexity effect was exacerbated when memory interference was generated by matching NPs in the sentence and memory load, whereas for older adults, memory-load interference did not vary with sentence complexity or memory-load matching. These results suggest that a general reduction in older adults' processing capacity was produced by the memory load, whereas the matching memory loads and sentence NPs produced a more specific form of interference that affected young adults' online processing.

[1]  T. Salthouse.  What do adult age differences in the Digit Symbol Substitution Test reflect? , 1992, Journal of gerontology.

[2]  S. Kemper,et al.  Younger and older adults' on-line processing of syntactically ambiguous sentences. , 1997, Psychology and aging.

[3]  E. Gibson.  Linguistic complexity: locality of syntactic dependencies , 1998, Cognition.

[4]  M A Just,et al.  The capacity theory of comprehension: new frontiers of evidence and arguments. , 1996, Psychological review.

[5]  Randall Hendrick,et al.  Memory-Load Interference in Syntactic Processing , 2002, Psychological science.

[6]  W. C. Shipley.  A Self-Administering Scale for Measuring Intellectual Impairment and Deterioration , 1940 .

[7]  G. Waters,et al.  The capacity theory of sentence comprehension: critique of Just and Carpenter (1992) , 1996, Psychological review.

[8]  P. Carpenter,et al.  Individual differences in working memory and reading , 1980 .

[9]  C Loehlin John,et al.  Latent variable models: an introduction to factor, path, and structural analysis , 1986 .

[10]  F. N. Dempster,et al.  The rise and fall of the inhibitory mechanism: Toward a unified theory of cognitive development and aging , 1992 .

[11]  J. Pickova.  The Measurement and Appraisal of Adult Intelligence , 1959 .

[12]  M. Just,et al.  Working Memory Constraints on the Resolution of Lexical Ambiguity: Maintaining Multiple Interpretations in Neutral Contexts , 1994 .

[13]  G. Waters,et al.  Verbal working memory and sentence comprehension , 1999, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[14]  M. Just,et al.  From the SelectedWorks of Marcel Adam Just 1992 A capacity theory of comprehension : Individual differences in working memory , 2017 .

[15]  P. Gordon,et al.  Memory interference during language processing. , 2001, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[16]  G. Waters,et al.  Age, working memory, and on-line syntactic processing in sentence comprehension. , 2001, Psychology and aging.

[17]  I. M. Ventry,et al.  The Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly: a New Tool , 1982, Ear and hearing.

[18]  E. Pfeiffer.  A Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire for the Assessment of Organic Brain Deficit in Elderly Patients † , 1975, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

[19]  H. Kucera,et al.  Computational analysis of present-day American English , 1967 .

[20]  S Kemper,et al.  Aging and resolution of quantifier scope effects. , 1999, The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences.

[21]  G. Waters,et al.  The Measurement of Verbal Working Memory Capacity and Its Relation to Reading Comprehension , 1996, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology.

[22]  Richard L. Lewis.  Interference in short-term memory: The magical number two (or three) in sentence processing , 1996, Journal of psycholinguistic research.