Effects of age-related declines in working memory on syntactic comprehension

与年龄相关的工作记忆下降对句法理解的影响

• 批准号: 9145328
• 负责人: David Norman Caplan
• 金额: $ 63.67万
• 依托单位: MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-30 至 2017-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9145328
• 关键词: Affect; Age; Aging; Area; Biological Preservation; Communication; Comprehension; Discrimination; Elements; Eye; Eye Movements; Goals; Health; Individual; Information Retrieval; Intervention; Language; Lead; Memory; Methods; Nature; Participant; Play; Process; Property; Public Health; Reader; Reading; Relative (related person); Research; Retrieval; Role; Short-Term Memory; Speed; Structure; Suggestion; Support System; System; Task Performances; Techniques; Testing; Time; Work; age effect; age related; base; behavior measurement; clinically significant; cognitive skill; falls; improved; language comprehension; language processing; memory retrieval; novel; procedural memory; repaired; sample fixation; skills; syntax; theories

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The research proposed here investigates age-related changes in the construction and use of syntactic structures in sentence comprehension. We distinguish between a skilled parser that incrementally assigns structure and meaning in most situations and a controlled processor that contributes to comprehension when the skilled parser fails to yield a meaning that the comprehender needs. We hypothesize that the skilled parser utilizes long term working memory and the controlled processor utilizes short term working memory. We hypothesize that age has no effect on the skilled system but that age-related changes in short term working memory negatively affect the controlled processor. The research proposed here will test predictions of this theory using detailed and novel analyses of eye fixations in reading, self-paced reading times and the time course of the ability to discriminate acceptable and unacceptable sentences under conditions that provide information about how items are retrieved in memory (the speed accuracy trade-off technique applied in sentences). Its theoretical significance lies in the understanding of the memory systems that support comprehension, age effects in comprehension and age-related changes in memory that lead to these effects.

 描述（由申请人提供）：此处提出的研究调查了句子理解中句法结构的构建和使用与年龄相关的变化。我们区分熟练的解析器和受控处理器，前者在大多数情况下逐步分配结构和含义，后者在熟练的解析器无法产生理解者所需的含义时有助于理解。我们假设熟练的解析器利用长期工作记忆，而受控处理器利用短期工作记忆。我们假设年龄对熟练系统没有影响，但短期工作记忆中与年龄相关的变化会对受控处理器产生负面影响。这里提出的研究将通过对阅读时的眼睛注视、自定进度的阅读时间以及在提供有关如何在内存中检索项目的信息（句子中应用的速度准确性权衡技术）的条件下区分可接受和不可接受的句子的能力的时间过程来测试该理论的预测。其理论意义在于理解支持理解的记忆系统、理解中的年龄效应以及导致这些效应的与年龄相关的记忆变化。