The Role of Age and Perceptual Symbols in Language Comprehension

Older and younger participants read sentences about objects and were then shown a picture of an object that either matched or mismatched the implied shape of the object in the sentence. Participants' response times were recorded when they judged whether the object had been mentioned in the sent...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychology and aging 2004-06, Vol.19 (2), p.352-356
Main Authors: Dijkstra, Katinka, Yaxley, Richard H, Madden, Carol J, Zwaan, Rolf A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult. Elderly
Age
Age Differences
Age Factors
Aged
Biological and medical sciences
Comprehension
Developmental psychology
Female
Form and Shape Perception
Form Perception
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Language
Male
Matching tasks
Object characteristics
Perceptual identification
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reaction Time
Reaction times
Reading
Situational models
Speech Perception
Symbolism
Visual Perception
Written information
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Summary:Older and younger participants read sentences about objects and were then shown a picture of an object that either matched or mismatched the implied shape of the object in the sentence. Participants' response times were recorded when they judged whether the object had been mentioned in the sentence. Responses were faster in the shape-matching condition for all participants, but the mismatch effect was stronger for older than for younger adults, even when the larger variability of the older group's response times was controlled for. These results suggest that older adults may construct stronger situation models than younger adults.
ISSN:0882-7974
1939-1498
DOI:10.1037/0882-7974.19.2.352