Effects of age and language proficiency in the processing of morphologically complex words

该项目考察了复合名词(例如，金鱼)在言语产生中的词汇表征和加工。健康的成年说话者和失语症患者都接受了测试。我们的数据显示，年龄较大的健康说话者(65岁以上)在复合名词命名方面的表现不如年轻说话者(18-35岁)。这些数据符合这样一种假设，即老年人的单词查找困难是由于在言语产生中缺乏获取词形表征的途径造成的。然而，语义加工的减速或减速是否以及以何种方式影响老年人的言语产生仍未得到解决。这一点将在项目的继续进行中进行审查。虽然我们没有获得任何经验证据来证明化合物的潜在形态-语音表征随年龄的具体变化，但复合词在词条水平上的表征结构仍然是一个争论的问题--特别是对于年长的健康说话者和失语症患者。关于这些研究问题，我们将在不同的实验范式下对复合目标的口语图片命名进行研究。此外，学习新的(不熟悉的)复合词(例如，钢琴鱼)将被考察(词汇化)。在以复合词为目标的图片命名任务中，将同时评估句法(语法性别)和语义效果。首先，将测试性别标记的决定基数对化合物生产的影响。第二，对复合词和简单名词(复合词的成分)产生的语义效应将在连续(累积语义)图片命名范式中进行检验，这些数据将在连续范式中的接受性语义分类任务中得到语义效应的补充。将测量反应时间和误差。此外，还将提取连续脑电(EEG)，以检查语音产生的潜在过程。此外，还将评估非语言认知功能(注意控制和抑制)在言语产生中的影响。本研究测试了以下问题：1)复合词是如何词汇存储的，它们在言语产生过程中是如何获得的？2)新的(不熟悉的)复合词的词汇习得是如何工作的？3)语义和词汇功能如何影响健康的老年和失语者的复合词提取？4)非语言注意控制过程在言语产生中的作用是什么？总而言之，本项目旨在更好地理解言语产生中潜在的词提取的功能过程，以及非语言认知功能的作用。到目前为止，几乎没有研究在一个实验方案中评估这些方面的所有方面。研究结果可以用来改进现有的失语症找词困难的治疗方法，并开发出训练非失语症老年人口找词的方法。

The project examines the lexical representation and processing of compound nouns (e.g., goldfish) in speech production. Both, healthy adult speakers and individuals with aphasia are tested. Our data show that older healthy speakers (65 + years) do worse than younger speakers (18-35 years) in the naming of compound nouns. The data are in line with the hypothesis that word-finding difficulties in the elderly result from deficient access to word-form representations in speech production. However, it is still unresolved whether and in which way reduced or decelerated semantic processing affects speech production in the elderly. This will be examined in the continuation of the project. While we did not obtain any empirical evidence for a specific change of the underlying morpho-phonological representation of compounds with age, the representational structure of compounds at the lemma level is still a matter of debate – especially for older healthy speakers and individuals with aphasia. With regard to these research questions, spoken picture naming of compound targets will be investigated in different experimental paradigms. In addition, learning of new (unfamiliar) compounds (e.g., *piano fish) will be examined (lexicalization). In picture-naming tasks with compounds as targets, both syntactic (grammatical gender) and semantic effects will be assessed. First, effects of gender-marked determiner primes on compound production will be tested. Second, semantic effects on the production of compounds and simple nouns (constituents of compounds) will be tested in the continuous (cumulative semantic) picture-naming paradigm, and these data will be complemented by semantic effects in a receptive semantic categorization task in the continuous paradigm. Reaction times and errors will be measured. In addition, the continuous electroencephalogram (EEG) will be extracted, in order to examine the underlying processes in speech production. Furthermore, the impact of non-verbal cognitive functions (attentional control and inhibition) in speech production will be assessed.The following research questions are tested: 1) How are compounds lexically stored and how are they accessed during speech production? 2) How does the lexical acquisition of new (unfamiliar) compounds work? 3) How do semantic and lexical functions affect compound retrieval in healthy older and aphasic speakers? 4) What is the role of non-verbal attentional control processes in speech production?In summary, the project aims at a better understanding of the functional processes underlying word retrieval in speech production, and of the role of non-verbal cognitive functions. Until now, there are almost no studies that have assessed all of these aspects in one experimental program.The results can be used to improve existing treatment approaches for word-finding difficulties in aphasia and to develop methods to train word-finding in the aging population without aphasia.