Madden D J
Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, Duke University Medical Center.
J Gerontol. 1992 Mar;47(2):P59-68. doi: 10.1093/geronj/47.2.p59.
This experiment examined the age-related slowing of visual word identification. Each of 108 subjects between 20 and 78 years of age performed a word/nonword discrimination (lexical decision) task in which the target was preceded by a single-word prime. Several aspects of the data were consistent with a generalized slowing model: There was a positive correlation between age and mean reaction time, the absolute magnitude of age differences increased as a function of task complexity, and the statistical control of a relatively task-independent index of processing speed attenuated the age-related variance in mean reaction time. The degree of age-related slowing was more pronounced for visually degraded targets (10 msec per year) than for intact targets (4 msec per year). Other aspects of lexical decision performance, however, suggested that some components of word identification, especially those involved in semantic activation, are relatively exempt from age-related slowing.
本实验研究了与年龄相关的视觉单词识别速度减慢现象。108名年龄在20岁至78岁之间的受试者每人都执行了一项单词/非单词辨别（词汇判断）任务，其中目标词之前有一个单字启动词。数据的几个方面与广义减慢模型一致：年龄与平均反应时间呈正相关，年龄差异的绝对值随任务复杂度的增加而增大，并且对一个相对独立于任务的处理速度指标进行统计控制，减弱了平均反应时间中与年龄相关的方差。与年龄相关的减慢程度在视觉上退化的目标词（每年10毫秒）比完整目标词（每年4毫秒）中更为明显。然而，词汇判断表现的其他方面表明，单词识别的一些成分，尤其是那些涉及语义激活的成分，相对不受与年龄相关的减慢影响。
