Yoon Jungmee, Campanelli Luca, Goral Mira, Marton Klara, Eichorn Naomi, Obler Loraine K
a Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences , The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York , New York , New York , USA.
Exp Aging Res. 2015;41(3):272-302. doi: 10.1080/0361073X.2015.1021646.
BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: Older adults show age-related decline in complex-sentence comprehension. This has been attributed to a decrease in cognitive abilities that may support language processing, such as working memory (e.g., Caplan, DeDe, Waters, & Michaud, 2011,Psychology and Aging, 26, 439-450). The authors examined whether older adults have difficulty comprehending semantically implausible sentences and whether specific executive functions contribute to their comprehension performance.
Forty-two younger adults (aged 18-35) and 42 older adults (aged 55-75) were tested on two experimental tasks: a multiple negative comprehension task and an information processing battery.
Both groups, older and younger adults, showed poorer performance for implausible sentences than for plausible sentences; however, no interaction was found between plausibility and age group. A regression analysis revealed that inhibition efficiency, as measured by a task that required resistance to proactive interference, predicted comprehension of implausible sentences in older adults only. Consistent with the compensation hypothesis, the older adults with better inhibition skills showed better comprehension than those with poor inhibition skills.
The findings suggest that semantic implausibility, along with syntactic complexity, increases linguistic and cognitive processing loads on auditory sentence comprehension. Moreover, the contribution of inhibitory control to the processing of semantic plausibility, particularly among older adults, suggests that the relationship between cognitive ability and language comprehension is strongly influenced by age.
背景/研究背景：老年人在复杂句子理解方面表现出与年龄相关的衰退。这归因于可能支持语言处理的认知能力下降，如工作记忆（例如，卡普兰、德德、沃特斯和米肖德，2011年，《心理学与衰老》，26卷，第439 - 450页）。作者研究了老年人在理解语义不合理的句子时是否存在困难，以及特定的执行功能是否对他们的理解表现有影响。
对42名年轻人（18 - 35岁）和42名老年人（55 - 75岁）进行了两项实验任务测试：多项否定理解任务和信息处理组套测试。
老年人和年轻人这两组在理解不合理句子时的表现均比理解合理句子时差；然而，合理性与年龄组之间未发现交互作用。回归分析显示，通过一项需要抵抗主动干扰的任务所测量的抑制效率，仅预测了老年人对不合理句子的理解。与补偿假说一致，抑制技能较好的老年人比抑制技能较差的老年人表现出更好的理解能力。
研究结果表明，语义不合理性与句法复杂性一起，增加了听觉句子理解中的语言和认知处理负荷。此外，抑制控制对语义合理性处理的贡献，特别是在老年人中，表明认知能力与语言理解之间的关系受到年龄的强烈影响。
