Howard D V
Exp Aging Res. 1983 Spring;9(1):27-30. doi: 10.1080/03610738308258416.
Adult age differences in semantic structure were investigated using nonmetric individual differences multidimensional scaling. Similarity judgments of all possible pairs of 16 animal names were obtained from 20 adults in each of the following six age ranges: 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79. The overall scaling solution revealed a semantic space consisting of the features of size and predativity. Comparisons of the age groups revealed a small but statistically significant tendency for participants in the two oldest groups to emphasize the concrete dimension of size, in contrast with the middle-aged groups who emphasized the abstract dimension of predativity. This abstract-to-concrete trend of adult age differences is compared with the concrete-to-abstract trend for this same semantic domain which has been observed previously among young children.
利用非度量个体差异多维标度法研究了成年人在语义结构上的年龄差异。从以下六个年龄范围（20 - 29岁、30 - 39岁、40 - 49岁、50 - 59岁、60 - 69岁、70 - 79岁）中各选取20名成年人，让他们对16个动物名称的所有可能组合进行相似性判断。整体标度解揭示了一个由大小和食肉性特征组成的语义空间。对各年龄组的比较显示，与强调食肉性抽象维度的中年组相比，两个年龄最大组的参与者有一个虽小但在统计学上显著的倾向，即强调大小的具体维度。将成年人年龄差异的这种从抽象到具体的趋势与之前在幼儿中观察到的同一语义领域从具体到抽象的趋势进行了比较。
