Text processing variables predict the readability of everyday documents read by older adults.

A model is presented to predict the readability of documents encountered by older adults. The documents studied are contained in the Educational Testing Service's Test of Basic Skills (1977 edition) and require readers to answer questions about charts (e.g., bus schedules), labels (e.g., plant spray labels and prescriptions), and forms (e.g., tax forms). The components of the model came from theoretical and empirical work on discourse processing and include such factors as discourse structure, emphasis, and position of an answer in a linguistic analysis of the everyday document.A sample of 482 adults from 52 to 93 years of age took the everyday problems test as well as a psychometric ability battery. The correlation was .54 (p < .01) between the readability scores for test items predicted by the model and the percentage of older adults correctly answering those items. In addition, the more difficult test items as identified by the model were correlated more highly with fluid intelligence abilities (figural relations and induction), crystallized intelligence abilities (vocabulary, experiential evaluation), and with memory span.

[1]  P. Mosenthal,et al.  UNDERSTANDING DOCUMENT LITERACY: VARIABLES UNDERLYING THE PERFORMANCE OF YOUNG ADULTS , 1988 .

[2]  C. Fletcher,et al.  Causal reasoning in the comprehension of simple narrative texts , 1988 .

[3]  Elizabeth M. Zelinski,et al.  Memory for Prose and Aging: A Meta-Analysis , 1988 .

[4]  P. Yee,et al.  Semantic Priming during Sentence Processing by Young and Older Adults. , 1984 .

[5]  Richard C. Anderson.  How to Construct Achievement Tests to Assess Comprehension , 1972 .

[6]  P. Baltes,et al.  Training research in aging on the fluid ability of inductive reasoning , 1981 .

[7]  R. Gagne.  Conditions of Learning , 1965 .

[8]  Deborah M. Burke,et al.  Language, memory, and aging: Patterns of language and memory in old age , 1988 .

[9]  Christopher Hertzog,et al.  Text Recall in Adulthood: The Role of Intellectual Abilities. , 1984 .

[10]  G. Fillenbaum,et al.  Screening the Elderly , 1985, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

[11]  Irwin S. Kirsch,et al.  Exploring Document Literacy: Variables Underlying the Performance of Young Adults. , 1990 .

[12]  Deborah M. Burke,et al.  Language, memory, and aging: Subject index , 1988 .

[13]  Richard C. Anderson,et al.  Conceptual and empirical bases of readability formulas , 1986 .

[14]  Robert Waller.  Designing a government form: A case study , 1984 .

[15]  Irwin S. Kirsch,et al.  Literacy, profiles of America's young adults , 1986 .

[16]  M. Lawton,et al.  Assessment of Older People: Self-Maintaining and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living , 1969 .

[17]  B. Meyer.  The organization of prose and its effects on memory , 1975 .

[18]  J. Chall,et al.  A FORMULA FOR PREDICTING READABILITY , 1948 .

[19]  P. Baltes,et al.  Intellectual Training Research in Aging: Modification of Performance on the Fluid Ability of Figural Relations. , 1981 .

[20]  G W McConkie,et al.  What is recalled after hearing a passage? , 1973, Journal of educational psychology.

[21]  B. Meyer.  Reading Comprehension and Aging , 1987, Annual Review of Gerontology and Geriatrics.

[22]  Sherry L. Willis,et al.  9 Current Issues in Cognitive Training Research , 1990 .

[23]  T. Salthouse,et al.  Effects of adult age and working memory on reasoning and spatial abilities. , 1989, Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory and Cognition.

[24]  R. Sternberg.  Intelligence, Information Processing and Analogical Reasoning : The Componential Analysis of Human Abilities , 1977 .

[25]  John Brown.  Similarity relations in recognition: A model to explain Tulving's data , 1986 .

[26]  John R. Nesselroade,et al.  Integration versus differentiation of fluid/crystallized intelligence in old age , 1980 .

[27]  Patricia Wright.  The quality control of document design , 1979 .

[28]  J. Ouslander.  Drug therapy in the elderly. , 1981, Annals of internal medicine.

[29]  Patricia Wright.  Writing Technical Information , 1987 .

[30]  T. Salthouse.  Mediation of Adult Age Differences in Cognition by Reductions in Working Memory and Speed of Processing , 1991 .

[31]  A. B. Ford,et al.  Race-related differences among elderly urban residents: a cohort study, 1975-1984. , 1990, Journal of gerontology.

[32]  Bonnie J. F. Meyer,et al.  Integrating different types of information in text , 1980 .

[33]  T. Salthouse,et al.  Effects of increased processing demands on age differences in working memory. , 1990 .

[34]  Priscilla Drum.  The Effects of Surface Structure Variables on Performance in Reading Comprehension Tests. , 1981 .

[35]  A. B. Ford,et al.  Health and Function in the Old and Very Old , 1988, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

[36]  B. K. Britton,et al.  Effects of Text Structure on Use of Cognitive Capacity during Reading. , 1982 .

[37]  Carol Sue Englert,et al.  Children's Developing Awareness of Text Structures in Expository Materials. , 1984 .

[38]  W. Kintsch,et al.  Memory and cognition , 1977 .

[39]  Gillian Cohen,et al.  Language, memory, and aging: Age differences in memory for texts: Production deficiency or processing limitations? , 1988 .

[40]  Bonnie J. F. Meyer,et al.  Effects of Discourse Type on Recall , 1984 .

[41]  David E. Kieras,et al.  Thematic Processes in the Comprehension of Technical Prose. , 1982 .

[42]  G. A. Ferguson,et al.  Statistical analysis in psychology and education , 1960 .

[43]  George R. Klare,et al.  The measurement of readability , 1963 .

[44]  John P. Rickards,et al.  Interaction of Dogmatism and Rhetorical Structure in Text Recall , 1987 .

[45]  T. Trabasso,et al.  Causal thinking and the representation of narrative events , 1985 .

[46]  John Paul Vincent.  Effects discourse types on memory of prose by young, middle-age, and old adults with average vocabularies , 1985 .

[47]  R. Cattell,et al.  Abilities : Their Structure , Growth , and Action , 2015 .

[48]  D. Howard,et al.  Category norms: a comparison of the Battig and Montague (1969) norms with the responses of adults between the ages of 20 and 80. , 1980, Journal of gerontology.

[49]  Gerda G. Fillenbaum,et al.  Multidimensional Functional Assessment of Older Adults: The Duke Older Americans Resources and Services Procedures , 1988 .

[50]  Lynn Hasher,et al.  Working Memory, Comprehension, and Aging: A Review and a New View , 1988 .

[51]  Bonnie J. F. Meyer,et al.  Everyday cognition in adulthood and late life: Prose processing in adulthood: The text, the reader, and the task , 1989 .

[52]  Walter Kintsch,et al.  Toward a model of text comprehension and production. , 1978 .

[53]  Robert N. Kantor,et al.  On the Failure of Readability Formulas to Define Readable Texts: A Case Study from Adaptations. , 1982 .

[54]  W. Kintsch,et al.  Reading comprehension and readability in educational practice and psychological theory , 1979 .

[55]  Mildred C. Robeck,et al.  Psychology of Reading: Foundations of Instruction. , 1974 .

[56]  Richard E. Mayer,et al.  Structural analysis of science prose: can we increase problem-solving performance? , 1995, ASTR.

[57]  Nancy Marshall,et al.  Comprehension of connected discourse: a study into the relationships between the structure of text and information recalled* , 1978 .

[58]  David E. Kieras,et al.  Rules for Comprehensible Technical Prose: A Survey of the Psycholinguistic Literature. , 1985 .

[59]  Carl H Frederiksen,et al.  Representing logical and semantic structure of knowledge acquired from discourse , 1975, Cognitive Psychology.

[60]  P. David Pearson.  The Effects of Grammatical Complexity on Children's Comprehension, Recall, and Conception of Certain Semantic Relations. , 1974 .

[61]  P. Thorndyke.  Cognitive structures in comprehension and memory of narrative discourse , 1977, Cognitive Psychology.