Zhu Zude, Hou Xiaopu, Yang Yiming
School of Linguistic Sciences and Arts, Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou, China.
Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center for Language Competence, Xuzhou, China.
Front Psychol. 2018 Mar 1;9:243. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00243. eCollection 2018.
Researchers have frequently reported an age-related decline in semantic processing during sentence comprehension. However, it remains unclear whether syntactic processing also declines or whether it remains constant as people age. In the present study, 26 younger adults and 20 older adults were recruited and matched in terms of working memory, general intelligence, verbal intelligence and fluency. They were then asked to make semantic acceptability judgments while completing a Chinese sentence reading task. The behavioral results revealed that the older adults had significantly lower accuracy on measures of semantic and syntactic processing compared to younger adults. Event-related potential (ERP) results showed that during semantic processing, older adults had a significantly reduced amplitude and delayed peak latency of the N400 compared to the younger adults. During syntactic processing, older adults also showed delayed peak latency of the P600 relative to younger adults. Moreover, while P600 amplitude was comparable between the two age groups, larger P600 amplitude was associated with worse performance only in the older adults. Together, the behavioral and ERP data suggest that there is an age-related decline in both semantic and syntactic processing, with a trend toward lower efficiency in syntactic ability.
研究人员经常报告称，在句子理解过程中，语义处理能力会随着年龄的增长而下降。然而，句法处理能力是否也会随着年龄增长而下降，或者是否保持不变，目前仍不清楚。在本研究中，招募了26名年轻成年人和20名年长成年人，并在工作记忆、一般智力、语言智力和流畅性方面进行了匹配。然后要求他们在完成一项中文句子阅读任务时做出语义可接受性判断。行为结果显示，与年轻成年人相比，年长成年人在语义和句法处理测量上的准确性显著更低。事件相关电位（ERP）结果表明，在语义处理过程中，与年轻成年人相比，年长成年人的N400波幅显著降低，峰值潜伏期延迟。在句法处理过程中，年长成年人相对于年轻成年人也表现出P600的峰值潜伏期延迟。此外，虽然两个年龄组之间的P600波幅相当，但只有在年长成年人中，更大的P600波幅与更差的表现相关。综合来看，行为和ERP数据表明，语义和句法处理能力都存在与年龄相关的下降，句法能力有降低效率的趋势。
