Chesneau Sophie, Jbabdi Saad, Champagne-Lavau Maud, Giroux Francine, Ska Bernadette
Centre de recherche, Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal, QC, Canada.
Psychol Neuropsychiatr Vieil. 2007 Mar;5(1):47-64.
Aging brings cognitive changes. Language is not immune to these changes. The use of compensation strategies may permit older adults to achieve a performance level identical to the one obtained by younger adults. This research aims to study text comprehension in aging and the reading strategies used for by older and younger adults. Kintsch's cognitive model (1988) allows the identification of different levels of representation within text treatment (linguistic form, macrostructure, microstructure and situation model) and predicts the underlying cognitive components. Eye-tracking analyses during reading permit inference about the moments of reading treatment and detection of reading strategies. Sixty highly educated participants were assessed. They were divided in two age groups (20-40 and 60-80 years old). Participants were asked to read and understand three texts constructed to highlight the features of text comprehension within each one of the different levels of text representation. The amount of detail and the necessity of updating the situation model varied for each text. Eye movements were registered by an eye-tracker (Cambridge research) during the reading process. Specific complementary tasks were administered to evaluate working memory, long-term memory, and executive functions. Variances analyses showed significantly lower performance by older adults regarding: 1) recall of the microstructure of the two texts with a high degree of detail, 2) macrostructure of the text with fewer details, and 3) performance on all tasks that evaluated cognitive components. Aging influenced treatment of levels of text representation depending on text characteristics. However, cluster analysis of the text comprehension and eye-tracker data revealed a group of older adults whose performance in reading comprehension was identical to the performance of younger adults, with the same reading profile. This result seems to show that use of compensation strategies by older adults at the onset of signs of cognitive deterioration is not necessary in reading.
衰老会带来认知变化。语言也无法免于这些变化。使用补偿策略或许能使老年人达到与年轻人相同的表现水平。本研究旨在探究衰老过程中的文本理解以及老年人和年轻人所使用的阅读策略。金茨的认知模型（1988）有助于识别文本处理过程中不同层次的表征（语言形式、宏观结构、微观结构和情境模型），并预测其潜在的认知成分。阅读过程中的眼动分析能够推断出阅读处理的时刻并检测阅读策略。对60名受过高等教育的参与者进行了评估。他们被分为两个年龄组（20 - 40岁和60 - 80岁）。要求参与者阅读并理解三篇文章，这些文章旨在突出不同文本表征层次中每一个层次的文本理解特征。每篇文章的细节量以及更新情境模型的必要性各不相同。在阅读过程中，通过眼动仪（剑桥研究公司）记录眼动情况。还进行了特定的补充任务来评估工作记忆、长期记忆和执行功能。方差分析显示，老年人在以下方面的表现显著较低：1）对两篇细节程度高的文章微观结构的回忆；2）细节较少的文章的宏观结构；3）所有评估认知成分任务的表现。衰老对文本表征层次的处理影响取决于文本特征。然而，对文本理解和眼动仪数据的聚类分析揭示了一组老年人，他们的阅读理解表现与年轻人相同，且阅读模式也相同。这一结果似乎表明，在阅读中，老年人在认知衰退迹象出现之初使用补偿策略并非必要。
