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I demonstrated that the eye-movement record is influenced by linguistic factors, which produce greater predictability effects as linguistic experience advances, and cognitive factors, which produce smaller predictability effects as they decline. Similarly, the N400, an ERP response that is modulated by a word's predictability, was also moderated by cognitive factors. Most importantly, older adults were able to use context efficiently to facilitate upcoming words in the ERP study, contrary to younger adults. Further, I provide initial evidence that coherence analysis may be used as a measure of cognitive effort to illustrate the facilitation that prediction confers to language comprehenders. The results indicate that for a comprehensive account of predictive processing research needs to take into account the role of experience acquired through lifetime and the declines that aging brings.
There is ample evidence that language users, including second-language (L2) users, can predict upcoming information during listening and reading. Yet it is still unclear when, how, and why language users engage in prediction, and what the relation is between prediction and learning. This volume presents a collection of current research, insights, and directions regarding the role of prediction in L2 processing and learning. The contributions in this volume specifically address how different (L1-based) theoretical models of prediction apply to or may be expanded to account for L2 processing, report new insights on factors (linguistic, cognitive, social) that modulate L2 users’ engagement in prediction, and discuss the functions that prediction may or may not serve in L2 processing and learning. Taken together, this volume illustrates various fruitful approaches to investigating and accounting for differences in predictive processing within and across individuals, as well as across populations.
Language production declines are often observed during healthy aging, while language comprehension remains relatively stable across the adult lifespan. However, language prediction, a process that occurs during comprehension in which individuals anticipate upcoming information, also shows age-related decline. Moreover, language theories suggest that language prediction and language production are related processes. While some studies find evidence in support of this relationship, it is not well understood, and how age factors in, even less so. Therefore, I conducted a series of four studies in younger and older adults to examine the relationship between language prediction and production, and how this relationship might differ with age. Participants completed a series of self-paced reading tasks to examine prediction, language production tasks, and other cognitive tasks to explore possible underlying mechanisms of the prediction--production relationship. Overall, results indicated age-group differences in language production, but the age-group differences in prediction were less reliable. Additionally, results did not consistently demonstrate evidence of predictive processing occurring during the self-paced tasks. However, during the components of the self-paced tasks explicitly requiring language production, there were significant effects of prediction, as well as an interaction between sentence type and age group. Participants across age groups had better performance on the more predictable items, with older adults showing a greater benefit than younger adults in one study. Taken together, this suggests a relationship between language prediction and language production, with some evidence for age-group differences in the relationship. However, more research needs to be conducted to understand what cognitive factors underlie this relationship, as the results from these analyses were not significant.
Component cognitive processes have played a critical role in the development of experimental aging research and theory in psychology as attested by articles published on this theme. However, in the last five to ten years, there has been a substantial increase in the number of articles attempting to isolate a single factor (or small subset of factors) responsible for age differences in information processing. This view of aging is frequently termed the complexity model of the generalized slowing model, the primary assumption being that age differences in cognition are due simply to a relatively larger performance decrement on the part of older adults (compared to younger adults) as task complexity increases. Because generalized complexity theorists have questioned the utility of using component cognitive processes as theoretical constructs, the editors feel it is time to restate why component cognitive processes are critical to any thorough understanding of age differences in cognition. Thus the present edited volume represents an attempt to demonstrate the utility of the process-specific approach to cognitive aging. Central to this effort are illustrations of how regression analyses may provide evidence for general slowing by maximizing explained variance while at the same time obscuring local sources of variance. The book concentrates on age differences in word and language processing, because these factors relate to reading which is a critical cognitive process used in everyday life. Furthermore, age differences in word and language processing illustrate the importance of taking component cognitive processes into consideration. The breadth of coverage of the book attests to the wide range of cognitive processes involved in word and language processing.
Normative aging is thought to influence the efficiency of real-time language processing; a number of researchers have suggested these changes emerge in response to age-related differences in how pre-stored event knowledge is used to pre-activate – or predict – upcoming information. However, the current literature has not been able to converge on a single framework to describe how old age impacts predictive processing, as previous studies have alternately shown that older adults show increased or reduced reliance on predictability information relative to younger adults. In the current set of studies, we suggest that variability in previous findings may have emerged because processing associated with accurate lexical prediction has not been systematically disentangled from processing related to accuracy-independent contextual support (i.e., plausibility and semantic association) in older readers. In Study 1, electrophysiological neural activity (ERPs) reflecting costs and benefits of accurate lexical prediction was compared to ERPs associated with integration of contextual information in both young and older readers. Both the amplitudes and time course of predictive processing did not show specific age-related changes relative to processing associated with contextual support, suggesting effects of age on real-time reading do not reflect specific differences in reliance on predictive mechanisms. Across two experiments in Study 1, older adults on the whole showed increased activity for updating-related processing (PNPs) relative to neural facilitation for expected or predictable items (N400s) as compared to younger adults. Such group-level analyses assume that relations between cognitive or neural functioning and reading strategies are similar within each age group. However, older and younger adults have shown group- and individual-level variability in cognitive resources, language experience, and neural network activity. Therefore, we investigated how within-group differences in cognitive (Study 2) and neural (Study 3) capacity modulated the amplitudes of the neural responses found in Study 1. Models of language processing in aging have suggested a lifetime of language experience may boost reading comprehension and facilitate language processing, while reduced memory and related cognitive resources may diminish reading efficacy. Theoretical frameworks of predictive processing have further posited that readers with strong language experience and cognitive resources may benefit when processing accurately predicted or predictable information, but have not described how aging may moderate these models. In Study 2, we analyzed how old age influenced the effects of working memory, vocabulary skill, and verbal fluency on costs and benefits associated with predictive relative to contextual processing. The results of Study 2 indicate that age-group impacted how working memory impacts neural facilitation associated with accurate prediction, and further influenced how vocabulary and verbal fluency co-modulate neural costs following unsupportive contextual information. These findings suggest age variably and uniquely moderates the relations between cognitive resources and language processing mechanisms. Further theoretical models of predictive processing have suggested that neural resources may also impact the strength of lexical predictions, and have postulated that predictable stimuli result in more synchronous neuronal firing relative to unpredictable information. In Study 3, we examined how neural benefits derived from accurate predictions are impacted by network-level neural synchrony in broadband brain activity, and explored whether firing synchrony showed specific age-related consequences for predictive processing as compared to contextual support. Using an EEG-derived measure suggested to reflect neural synchrony (1/f neural noise), we found noise partially mediated age-related reductions in N400s to accurately predicted items – but did not similarly explain N400 effects of contextual support. Our results show that neural synchrony impacts individual-level differences in predictive processing across the lifespan. Together, the studies in this dissertation demonstrate that the impact of normative aging on predictive processing is informed by individual variability in cognitive resources, language experience, and neural noise. Throughout this dissertation, the methodological and theoretical implications of this finding are discussed with regard to necessary future examinations of language processing in aging.
Susan Kemper A debate about the role of working memory in language processing has become center-most in psycholinguistics (Caplan & Waters, in press; Just & Carpenter, 1992; Just, Carpenter, & Keller, 1996; Waters & Caplan, 1996). This debate concerns which aspects of language processing are vulnerable to working memory limitations, how working memory is best measured, and whether compensatory processes can offset working memory limitations. Age-comparative studies are particularly relevant to this debate for several reasons: difficulties with language and communication are frequently mentioned by older adults and signal the onset of Alzheimer's dementia and other pathologies associated with age; older adults commonly experience working memory limitations that affect their ability to perform everyday activities; the rapid aging of the United States population has forced psychologists and gerontologists to examine the effects of aging on cognition, drawing many investigators to the study of cognitive aging. Older adults constitute ideal population for studying how working memory limitations affect cognitive performance, particularly language and communication. Age-comparative studies of cognitive processes have advanced our understanding of the temporal dynamics of cognition as well as the working memory demands of many types of tasks (Kliegl, Mayr, & Krampe, 1994; Mayr & Kliegl, 1993). The research findings reviewed in this volume have clear implications - for addressing the practical problems of older adults as consumers of leisure ti- reading, radio and television broadcasts, as targets of medical, legal, and financial documents, and as participants in a web of service agencies and volunteer activities.
Author : National Research Council Publisher : National Academies Press Page : 321 pages File Size : 15,1 MB Release : 2004-04-25 Category : Social Science ISBN : 0309091160
Emerging and currently available technologies offer great promise for helping older adults, even those without serious disabilities, to live healthy, comfortable, and productive lives. What technologies offer the most potential benefit? What challenges must be overcome, what problems must be solved, for this promise to be fulfilled? How can federal agencies like the National Institute on Aging best use their resources to support the translation from laboratory findings to useful, marketable products and services? Technology for Adaptive Aging is the product of a workshop that brought together distinguished experts in aging research and in technology to discuss applications of technology to communication, education and learning, employment, health, living environments, and transportation for older adults. It includes all of the workshop papers and the report of the committee that organized the workshop. The committee report synthesizes and evaluates the points made in the workshop papers and recommends priorities for federal support of translational research in technology for older adults.
Ever since the notion of explanatory adequacy was promoted by Chomsky in his 1965 Aspects, linguists and psycholinguists have been in pursuit of a psychologically valid theory of grammar. To be explanatorily adequate, a theory of grammar can not only describe the general characteristics of a language but can also account for the underlying psychological processes of acquiring and processing that language. To be considered psychologically valid, a grammar must be learnable by ordinary children (the problem of acquisition) and must generate sentences that are parsable by ordinary people (the problem of processing). Ultimately, the fields of language acquisition and processing are concerned with the same goal: to build a theory that accounts for grammar as it is acquired by children; accessed in comprehension and production of speech; and represented within the human mind. Unfortunately, these two fields developed independently and have rarely been well-informed about each other's concerns. Both have experienced past difficulties as a result. Recently, new models have been developed with full consideration to cross-linguistic diversity. Gone are many of the basic assumptions of conventional models, and in their place a variety of innovative and more flexible assumptions have emerged. However, in their attempt to address cross-linguistic issues, these processing models have yet to fully address the developmental challenge: How can a child without a stable grammar process language and still manage to acquire new grammar? This book attempts to develop a model of language processing that addresses both cross-linguistic and developmental challenges. It proposes to link the setting of a basic configurational parameter during language acquisition to the different organization of processing strategies in left- and right-branching languages. Based primarily on Mazuka's doctoral dissertation, this volume incorporates various responses to the original proposal as well as the author's responses to the comments.
Why language ability remains resilient and how it shapes our lives. We acquire our native language, seemingly without effort, in infancy and early childhood. Language is our constant companion throughout our lifetime, even as we age. Indeed, compared with other aspects of cognition, language seems to be fairly resilient through the process of aging. In Changing Minds, Roger Kreuz and Richard Roberts examine how aging affects language—and how language affects aging. Kreuz and Roberts report that what appear to be changes in an older person's language ability are actually produced by declines in such other cognitive processes as memory and perception. Some language abilities, including vocabulary size and writing ability, may even improve with age. And certain language activities—including reading fiction and engaging in conversation—may even help us live fuller and healthier lives. Kreuz and Roberts explain the cognitive processes underlying our language ability, exploring in particular how changes in these processes lead to changes in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. They consider, among other things, the inability to produce a word that's on the tip of your tongue—and suggest that the increasing incidence of this with age may be the result of a surfeit of world knowledge. For example, older people can be better storytellers, and (something to remember at a family reunion) their perceived tendency toward off-topic verbosity may actually reflect communicative goals.