Word recognition: age differences in contextual facilitation effects.

A series of experiments compared contextual facilitation of word recognition in old (63-80) and young (19-34) subjects. Visual word recognition was examined in a lexical decision task. Sentence contexts or no context preceded words or non-words. Both groups responded faster when context was supplied. For high predictability words, there was no age difference in the magnitude of the contextual facilitation effect. For low predictability words and non-words, the old showed greater contextual facilitation than the young. Auditory word recognition was tested with target words spoken with or without sentence context in a background of white noise. Old subjects, again, showed superior contextual facilitation. It was concluded that old people compensate for deterioration in stimulus quality by more effective use of contextual information.