Effect of schooling in auditory lexical decision

Abstract

The task of lexical decision demands the functioning of the phonological loop to identify and discriminate strings of sounds and lexical knowledge to identify if this string can be taken as a real word or pseudo-word.ObjectiveTo verify the effect of schooling on the performance of healthy elderly in lexical decision tasks, in the auditory modality.Methods23 Participants, aged sixty years or older were divided into two groups: 1-8 years and greater than 8 years of schooling. The PALPA lexical decision subtest containing words and pseudo-words was applied.ResultsThere was no significant difference between the groups in identifying words and pseudo-words. Errors in pseudo-words predominated in both groups. Total scoring of the groups differed with worse performance in the group with less schooling. There was a tendency toward statistically significant difference. The errors in words occurred predominantly in words of low-imageability, especially in the lower educated group. In this group, there was a positive correlation between schooling and errors in pseudo-words.ConclusionThere was a mild effect of schooling in this task. Studies on lexical decision with larger samples could offer an important contribution for estimating pre-morbid skills and contribute to understanding pathological conditions.

Sociocultural factors in Brazilian neuropsycholinguistic studies.

“…Other studies of Brazilian samples were published that reported the effects of age and education on cognitive performance in healthy individuals such as Brucki et al (2011) who used the Mini Exame do Estado Mental, Ribeiro, Freitas, Radanovic, & Mansur (2010) who studied visual processing in the elderly, Naito, Uessugue, Cabral, Mansur, Radanovic, & Mansur (2008) who used a lexical auditory decision task, Radanovic, Mansur, & Scaff (2004) who used the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination, and Silva, Cardoso, & Fonseca (2012) who used the Teste de Cancelamento dos Sinos. Overall, an effect of education was identified in almost all of the tasks, especially the more complex linguistic stimulus tasks but also on visual tasks considered simple for healthy individuals in which the effect was more qualitative in the selection of successful strategies for visual canceling.…”