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

该项目研究了复合名词（例如，金鱼）在语音生成中的词汇表征和处理。健康的成年演讲者和失语症患者都接受了测试。我们的数据显示，健康的老年人（65岁以上）在命名复合名词方面比年轻人（18-35岁）做得更差。这些数据与假设一致，即老年人发现单词的困难是由于缺乏对语音生成中的单词形式表征的访问。然而，语义处理的减少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。这将在项目的继续进行中加以审查。虽然我们没有获得任何经验证据来证明化合物的基本形态-语音表征随年龄的具体变化，但化合物在引理水平上的表征结构仍然是一个有争议的问题-特别是对于老年健康说话者和失语症患者。针对这些研究问题，本文将采用不同的实验范式对复合靶标的语音图像命名进行研究。此外，学习新的（不熟悉的）复合词（例如，钢琴鱼）将被检查（词汇化）。在以复合词为目标的图片命名任务中，将评估句法（语法性别）和语义效果。首先，将测试带有性别标记的决定因子对化合物生产的影响。其次，将在连续（累积语义）图片命名范式中测试语义对合成词和简单名词（合成词的成分）产生的影响，这些数据将通过连续范式中接受性语义分类任务中的语义效应来补充。反应时间和误差将被测量。此外，将提取连续脑电图（EEG），以检查语音产生的潜在过程。此外，非言语认知功能（注意控制和抑制）对言语产生的影响将被评估。测试了以下研究问题：1)复合词在词汇上是如何储存的，在语音生成过程中是如何被访问的？新（不熟悉）复合词的词汇习得是如何进行的？3)语义和词汇功能如何影响健康老年人和失语者的复合检索？4)非言语注意控制过程在言语产生中的作用是什么？总之，该项目旨在更好地理解语音产生中单词检索的功能过程，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项目中评估了所有这些方面。研究结果可用于改进现有的失语患者找词困难的治疗方法，并为老年非失语人群的找词训练提供方法。

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.