Gunter T C, Jackson J L, Mulder G
Institute for Experimental and Occupational Psychology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.
Psychophysiology. 1995 May;32(3):215-29. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8986.1995.tb02951.x.
Twenty-four young and 24 middle-aged academics carried out a language recognition task in which sentences were presented that made either a high or a low demand on working memory (WM). The sentences ended either normally (i.e., congruent) or with an incongruous word. Middle-aged subjects had smaller WM scores, a marginally slowed down recognition performance, and a smaller and delayed N400 component. The event-related potential (ERP) difference between congruent and incongruent endings was smaller in the high-load condition for younger subjects and totally disappeared for the middle-aged subjects. ERPs for all subjects showed a WM-related positivity in the middle of the sentence and a WM-related negativity at the sentence ending. These shifts could be associated with either storage and retrieval processes or with clause wrap-up processes. Most ERP-effects were dependent on WM capacity. Age differences in sentence processing are not simply explained by age itself but depend to a large extent on individual memory capacity.
24名年轻学者和24名中年学者进行了一项语言识别任务，在此任务中呈现的句子对工作记忆（WM）的要求有高有低。句子结尾要么正常（即一致），要么有一个不一致的单词。中年受试者的工作记忆得分较低，识别表现略有减慢，N400成分较小且延迟。在高负荷条件下，年轻受试者中一致和不一致结尾之间的事件相关电位（ERP）差异较小，而中年受试者中该差异完全消失。所有受试者的ERP在句子中间显示出与工作记忆相关的正电位，在句子结尾显示出与工作记忆相关的负电位。这些变化可能与存储和检索过程或从句结束过程有关。大多数ERP效应取决于工作记忆容量。句子处理中的年龄差异不能简单地用年龄本身来解释，而是在很大程度上取决于个体记忆容量。
