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Abstract
Background/Study Context: A goal of language and aging research is to determine the nature of change in language-processing skills. In this study the authors examine the role of age and use of cues (e.g., word order, verbal agreement, sentence structure) on online sentence processing.
Methods: French young and older adults were asked to detect grammatical violations in sentences as quickly as possible. Detection times were analyzed as a function of participants’ age and sentence characteristics (i.e., violation type, span, and position).
Results: Above and beyond main effects of participant's age and linguistic features, results showed age-related differences in effects of linguistic cues on sentence processing and important individual differences during aging in hierarchies of cue strength.
Conclusion: Young and older adults use similar linguistic cues in the online process, but loss of cognitive resources with age shows a cost of cue use and a greater use of context.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported in part by the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) and a grant from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (grants nos.: ANR-06-BLAN-0241-01; ANR-BLAN07-1_196867).