Hanif Naveen, Jefferies Elizabeth, de Bruin Angela
Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2025 Jan 8;78(11):17470218241309602. doi: 10.1177/17470218241309602.
Word retrieval during speech production has been found to slow down with ageing. Usually, words are produced in sentence contexts. The current studies examined how different sentence contexts influence lexical retrieval in younger and older adults. We also examined the potential influence of semantic knowledge and control on sentence-context effects. Study 1 was completed by 48 younger and 48 older adults. They named pictures that were preceded by a matched context (which predicted that specific target word), a mismatched context (predicting another word), a neutral context (that did not predict one specific word), or no context. In comparison to the neutral context, both younger and older adults' word production was faster in matched contexts, suggesting both age groups benefitted from sentence contexts facilitating the retrieval of predictable words. Neither age group was slowed down by the mismatched contexts (compared to the neutral contexts), suggesting these contexts did not create (sufficient) interference to hinder lexical retrieval. In Study 2, participants completed measures of semantic knowledge, verbal fluency, semantic control, and inhibition. Older adults showed larger semantic knowledge but poorer inhibition and (on some measures) semantic control than younger adults. However, none of these measures predicted the sentence context effects observed in Study 1. Together, this suggests older adults' lexical retrieval can continue to benefit from sentence contexts predictive of upcoming words during language production.
研究发现，言语产生过程中的词汇提取会随着年龄增长而变慢。通常情况下，词汇是在句子语境中产生的。当前的研究考察了不同的句子语境如何影响年轻人和老年人的词汇提取。我们还考察了语义知识和控制对句子语境效应的潜在影响。研究1由48名年轻人和48名老年人完成。他们为在匹配语境（预测特定目标词）、不匹配语境（预测另一个词）、中性语境（不预测特定一个词）或无语境之前出现的图片命名。与中性语境相比，年轻人和老年人在匹配语境中的词汇产生都更快，这表明两个年龄组都从有助于可预测词汇提取的句子语境中受益。两个年龄组在不匹配语境中（与中性语境相比）都没有变慢，这表明这些语境没有产生（足够的）干扰来阻碍词汇提取。在研究2中，参与者完成了语义知识、言语流畅性、语义控制和抑制的测量。与年轻人相比，老年人表现出更大的语义知识，但抑制能力较差，并且（在某些测量中）语义控制能力也较差。然而，这些测量都没有预测到研究1中观察到的句子语境效应。总体而言，这表明老年人的词汇提取在语言产生过程中仍然可以从预测即将出现的单词的句子语境中受益。
