ADULT AGE DIFFERENCES IN ONLINE PROCESSING OF DISCOURSE

从文本中理解和记忆信息的能力(BE 它是小说、报纸或国税局表格)是一项关键技能 正常的成人功能。尽管如此，我们知道相对 几乎没有关于不同能力的老年人对 不同类型的阅读材料的需求。很明显， 老年人通常在实验室的标准记忆力方面有困难 这些赤字至少在一定程度上是由于 初始编码的质量和程度的差异。一点儿 已经做了调查老年人使用的策略 成人在理解(或“编码”)文本方面。这部分是由于 由于研究文本在线编码的方法 都是最近几年才发展起来的。拟议的研究 旨在利用这些新方法来检查 老年读者的在线加工策略。具体来说， 这些方法包括准确测量阅读时间 单词的级别和句子的级别作为 不同文本属性的功能。文本属性包括 在词的级别(例如，频率、长度)、级别 句子的长度(例如，词长、命题数量)。 或在更广泛的文本级别(例如，叙述性、熟悉性)。 多元回归，其中阅读时间是依赖的 由这些文本属性预测的变量，然后可用于 考察文本特征在控制中的差异效应 处理时间。这种方法论适用于语篇研究 在成年后进行处理将使对 关于老年人分配加工时间的假设 在对文本的理解上有所不同。另外，它的速度 阅读过程中的概念识别能力将用于评估年龄 在文本的在线表示方面的差异。一个重要的 这项研究计划的特点是，在线措施将是 与召回结果相关，从而能够检查(1) 阅读策略与记忆能力的关系 这段关系的性质可能存在年龄差异。一个 建议的研究计划的重要工作假设是 成年后的处理缺陷可能需要这样做 老年人按顺序使用不同的阅读策略 保持高度的理解力和记忆力。

The ability to comprehend and remember information from text (be it a novel, a newspaper, or an IRS form) is a critical skill for normal adult functioning. In spite of this, we know relatively little about how older adults of varying abilities respond to the demands of different kinds of reading materials. It is clear that the elderly often have difficulty in standard laboratory memory tasks, and that these deficits are, at least in part, due to differences in the quality and degree of initial encoding. Little has been done to investigate the strategies used by the elderly adult in comprehending (or "encoding") text. This is partly due to the fact that methods for studying the online encoding of text have only been developed in recent years. The proposed research is designed to take advantage of these new methodologies to examine the online processing strategies of elderly readers. Specifically, these methods include the accurate measurement of reading time at the level of the word and at the level of the sentence as a function of different text attributes. Text attributes include those at the level of the word (e.g., frequency, length), the level of the sentence (e.g., length in words, number of propositions). or at a broader text level (e.g., narrativity, familiarity). Multiple regression, in which reading time is the dependent variable predicted by these text attributes, may then be used to examine differential effects of text features in controlling processing time. Such a methodology applied to the study of text processing in later adulthood would enable the investigation of the hypothesis that the older adult distributes processing time differently in the comprehension of text. Additionally, the speed of concept recognition during reading will be used to assess age differences in the online representation of the text. An important feature of this research program is that online measures will be related to recall outcome, thus enabling an examination of (1) the relationship between reading strategy and memory ability, and (2) possible age differences in the nature of this relationship. An important working hypothesis of the proposed research program is that processing deficits in later adulthood may necessitate that the elderly adult make use of different reading strategies in order to maintain high levels of comprehension and recall.