Healthy Aging and Sentence Production: Disrupted Lexical Access in the Context of Intact Syntactic Planning
Healthy Aging and Sentence Production: Disrupted Lexical Access in the Context of Intact Syntactic Planning
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DOI：
10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00257
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发表时间：
2020-02-21
影响因子：
3.8
通讯作者：
Wheeldon, Linda
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hardy, Sophie M.;Segaert, Katrien;Wheeldon, Linda
健康的衰老并不会平等地影响语言处理的所有功能。在这项研究中，我们考察了年龄对流利句子产生的不同过程的影响，这是一项复杂的任务，需要成功地执行和协调多个过程。在实验1中，我们使用句法启动范式考察了年龄对句法选择速度的影响。与不相关的启动词相比，年轻人和老年人在句法相关的启动词之后产生目标句的速度都更快，这表明句法易化效应随着年龄的增长而保持。在实验2中，我们使用计划范围范式考察了句法规划和词汇提取中的年龄相关效应：参与者描述了用初始并列或简单名词短语引出句子的运动图片展示，并在一半的实验中预览了第二张图片。在没有预习的情况下，两个年龄组都较慢地开始使用较大的并列短语，这表明两个年龄段的短语规划范围相似。然而，与年龄相关的差异确实与预览操作有关：年轻人在两种阶段条件下都表现出预览的速度优势，而老年人只在初始阶段(协调条件)表现出速度预览优势。此外，在初始阶段(简单情况)之外进行预览会导致老年人明显更容易出错。因此，尽管句法规划范围似乎不受年龄的影响，但老年人在管理词汇项的激活和整合到句法结构方面似乎确实遇到了问题。综上所述，我们的发现表明，健康的衰老会扰乱涉及句子产生的词汇过程，而不是句法过程。
Healthy aging does not affect all features of language processing equally. In this study, we investigated the effects of aging on different processes involved in fluent sentence production, a complex task that requires the successful execution and coordination of multiple processes. In Experiment 1, we investigated age-related effects on the speed of syntax selection using a syntactic priming paradigm. Both young and older adults produced target sentences quicker following syntactically related primes compared to unrelated primes, indicating that syntactic facilitation effects are preserved with age. In Experiment 2, we investigated age-related effects in syntactic planning and lexical retrieval using a planning scope paradigm: participants described moving picture displays designed to elicit sentences with either initial coordinate or simple noun phrases and, on half of the trials, the second picture was previewed. Without preview, both age groups were slower to initiate sentences with larger coordinate phrases, suggesting a similar phrasal planning scope. However, age-related differences did emerge relating to the preview manipulation: while young adults displayed speed benefits of preview in both phrase conditions, older adults only displayed speed preview benefits within the initial phrase (coordinate condition). Moreover, preview outside the initial phrase (simple condition) caused older adults to become significantly more error-prone. Thus, while syntactic planning scope appears unaffected by aging, older adults do appear to encounter problems with managing the activation and integration of lexical items into syntactic structures. Taken together, our findings indicate that healthy aging disrupts the lexical, but not the syntactic, processes involved in sentence production.