Kemper Susan, Liu Chiung-Ju
Gerontology Center, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA.
Psychol Aging. 2007 Mar;22(1):84-93. doi: 10.1037/0882-7974.22.1.84.
The eye movements of young and older adults were tracked as they read sentences varying in syntactic complexity. In Experiment 1, cleft object and object relative clause sentences were more difficult to process than cleft subject and subject relative clause sentences; however, older adults made many more regressions, resulting in increased regression path fixation times and total fixation times, than young adults while processing cleft object and object relative clause sentences. In Experiment 2, older adults experienced more difficulty than young adults while reading cleft and relative clause sentences with temporary syntactic ambiguities created by deleting the that complementizers. Regression analyses indicated that readers with smaller working memories need more regressions and longer fixation times to process cleft object and object relative clause sentences. These results suggest that age-associated declines in working memory do affect syntactic processing.
在年轻人和老年人阅读句法复杂度各异的句子时，他们的眼球运动被追踪记录。在实验1中，宾语分裂句和宾语关系从句比主语分裂句和主语关系从句更难处理；然而，在处理宾语分裂句和宾语关系从句时，老年人比年轻人产生了更多的回视，导致回视路径注视时间和总注视时间增加。在实验2中，在阅读通过删除that补语词而产生临时句法歧义的分裂句和关系从句时，老年人比年轻人遇到更多困难。回归分析表明，工作记忆较小的读者在处理宾语分裂句和宾语关系从句时需要更多的回视和更长的注视时间。这些结果表明，与年龄相关的工作记忆衰退确实会影响句法处理。
