Feng Wangshu, Zhang Xiaokun, Wang Weijuan, Fan Lin
Artificial Intelligence and Human Languages Lab, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing, China.
National Research Centre for Foreign Language Education, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing, China.
Front Psychol. 2025 Jul 10;16:1578192. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1578192. eCollection 2025.
In verbal communication, speakers often use implicit utterances that need listeners to interpret via pragmatic inference. As individuals age, their ability to make efficient and accurate pragmatic inferences may decline, leading to communication difficulties.
This study examined the cognitive aging phenomenon of pragmatic inference and its neural mechanisms using EEG recordings.
Participants were presented with dialogues involving direct and indirect replies and were required to judge the speaker's intended meaning based on the context.
Younger participants outperformed older participants in task accuracy for indirect replies. Both groups exhibited an increased N400 for indirect replies in the late stages of reply presentation. However, younger participants exhibited greater N400 effects in the early and middle stages, something notably absent in older participants.
These findings suggest that older adults have a reduced ability to make pragmatic inferences, likely due to difficulties in dynamically enriching semantic content in real-time speech.
在言语交流中，说话者经常使用隐含话语，这需要听众通过语用推理来解读。随着个体年龄的增长，他们进行高效准确语用推理的能力可能会下降，从而导致沟通困难。
本研究使用脑电图记录来考察语用推理的认知老化现象及其神经机制。
向参与者呈现包含直接和间接回答的对话，并要求他们根据上下文判断说话者的意图。
在间接回答的任务准确性方面，年轻参与者优于年长参与者。两组在回答呈现后期对间接回答均表现出N400增强。然而，年轻参与者在早期和中期表现出更大的N400效应，而年长参与者则明显没有这种情况。
这些发现表明，老年人进行语用推理的能力下降，可能是由于在实时言语中动态丰富语义内容存在困难。
