Adult age differences in letter-level and word-level processing.

Allen, Philip A.; Madden, David J.; Crozier, Loretta C.

doi:10.1037/0882-7974.6.2.261

Cited by 64 publications

(101 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Error rates were about twice as large for the young subjects as for the older subjects (cf. Allen et al, 1991;Allen, Sliwinski, & Bowie, 2002).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet despite so many years of practice, lexical-decision response times (RTs) increase with age. For example, Allen, Madden, and Crozier (1991) found average RTs of 800 ms for older adults compared with 500 ms for young adults. Word frequency effects, longer RTs with lower frequency words, are also larger for older adults (see Allen et al, 1991;Allen, Madden, Weber, & Groth, 1993;Allen, Sliwinski, & Bowie, 2002;Lima, Hale, & Myerson, 1991).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, Allen, Madden, and Crozier (1991) found average RTs of 800 ms for older adults compared with 500 ms for young adults. Word frequency effects, longer RTs with lower frequency words, are also larger for older adults (see Allen et al, 1991;Allen, Madden, Weber, & Groth, 1993;Allen, Sliwinski, & Bowie, 2002;Lima, Hale, & Myerson, 1991).Recently, Ratcliff, Gomez, and McKoon (2004) have applied the diffusion model for twochoice decisions (Ratcliff, 1978(Ratcliff, , 1981(Ratcliff, , 1985(Ratcliff, , 1988(Ratcliff, , 2002Ratcliff & Rouder, 1998Ratcliff & Smith, 2004;Ratcliff, Van Zandt, & McKoon, 1999) to lexical-decision data. The model allows processing to be separated into several components: the rate at which information about the stimulus string of letters accumulates in the decision system (which reflects the goodness of match between the test string and lexical memory), the criteria that determine the amounts of information that must be accumulated before a decision can be made, nondecision…”

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confidence: 99%

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A Diffusion Model Analysis of the Effects of Aging in the Lexical-Decision Task.

Ratcliff¹,

Thapar²,

Gómez³

et al. 2004

Psychology and Aging

278

329

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The effects of aging on response time (RT) are examined in 2 lexical-decision experiments with young and older subjects (age 60-75). The results show that the older subjects were slower than the young subjects, but more accurate. R. diffusion model provided a good account of RTs, their distributions, and response accuracy. The fits show an 80-100-ms slowing of the nondecision components of RT for older subjects relative to young subjects and more conservative decision criterion settings for older subjects than for young subjects. The rates of accumulation of evidence were not significantly different for older compared with young subjects (less than 2% and 5% higher for older subjects relative to young subjects in the 2 experiments).Across a wide variety of cognitive tasks, research has shown that processing slows with age. For some tasks, especially those like letter discrimination that depend heavily on peripheral processes, this is not surprising (e.g., . However, for other tasks it might be expected that performance would improve with age. One such task is lexical decision, the task of interest in this article. Over a lifetime of 60 to 70 years, the number of encounters with many words must greatly exceed the number of encounters in the first 20 years. Yet despite so many years of practice, lexical-decision response times (RTs) increase with age. For example, Allen, Madden, and Crozier (1991) found average RTs of 800 ms for older adults compared with 500 ms for young adults. Word frequency effects, longer RTs with lower frequency words, are also larger for older adults (see Allen et al., 1991;Allen, Madden, Weber, & Groth, 1993;Allen, Sliwinski, & Bowie, 2002;Lima, Hale, & Myerson, 1991).Recently, Ratcliff, Gomez, and McKoon (2004) have applied the diffusion model for twochoice decisions (Ratcliff, 1978(Ratcliff, , 1981(Ratcliff, , 1985(Ratcliff, , 1988(Ratcliff, , 2002Ratcliff & Rouder, 1998Ratcliff & Smith, 2004;Ratcliff, Van Zandt, & McKoon, 1999) to lexical-decision data. The model allows processing to be separated into several components: the rate at which information about the stimulus string of letters accumulates in the decision system (which reflects the goodness of match between the test string and lexical memory), the criteria that determine the amounts of information that must be accumulated before a decision can be made, nondecision

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“…Error rates were about twice as large for the young subjects as for the older subjects (cf. Allen et al, 1991;Allen, Sliwinski, & Bowie, 2002).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A Diffusion Model Analysis of the Effects of Aging in the Lexical-Decision Task.

Ratcliff¹,

Thapar²,

Gómez³

et al. 2004

Psychology and Aging

278

329

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, it was unclear whether resource demands would be sufficiently increased by this manipulation to reveal age differences in resource capacity. Although the results of several studies indicate that older adults take significantly longer to recognize visually presented words than do younger adults (e.g., Allen, Madden, & Crozier, 1991;Bowles & Poon, 1981), Lima et al (1991) concluded that performance on lexical tasks (i.e., tasks utilizing words as stimuli) is less affected by age than is performance on nonlexical tasks. Allen et al (1993) reported that age differences in word recognition latencies may be due more to age decrements in peripheral processing stages rather than central processing stages.…”

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confidence: 81%

Endogenous visuospatial precuing effects as a function of age and task demands

Tellinghuisen

Zimba

Robin

1996

Perception & Psychophysics

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This experiment examined the effects of age on processing resource capacity using an endogenous visuospatial precuing task and four levels of resource demands. Younger and older adults made speeded two-choice responses to dim and bright targets that required a line-orientation or a lexical decision. An arrow preceding target onset served as an attentional cue to affect the spatial distribution of resources. It provided accurate information about the target's location on most trials and inaccurate or neutral information on the remaining trials. Although older adults were slower than younger adults under all conditions and were more affected by the resource demand manipulations, they exhibited a pattern of precuing effects across conditions that was similar to that of the younger adults. Results are consistent with the idea that the visuospatial attention system remains relatively unaffected by aging. However, the data speak against the idea that capacity reduction is the primary contributor to age-related slowing.One of the most pervasive findings in cognitive aging research is that there is an increased slowness of behavior with increased age. As Wickens, Braune, and Stokes (1987) noted; the evidence appears unambiguous that there is a slowing in speed of performance for individuals above the age of 25 on information-processing tasks in which response latency (RT) is the dependent measure. This slowing has been attributed to age effects at nearly all stages of information processing (see Kausler,

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“…Allen, Wallace, and Waag (1991) examined letter identification performance on a task in which subjects matched a target letter to the initial letter of a subsequently presented probe word. The poor imagers showed a word frequency advantage (across four word frequency categories) for the letter identification task, which suggests that these subjects used word-level (holistic) codes to indirectly access letter-level (analytic) information (Allen, Madden, & Crozier, 1991;Allen, Wallace, & Waag, 1991). The vivid imagers, on the other hand, showed a nonmonotonic RT effect across word frequency, indicating that they processed letter strings as words as well as individual letters.…”

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confidence: 93%

Influence of imaging ability on word transformation

1994

Self Cite

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In the present study, we examined whether individual differences in imaging ability affect visual word recognition. Poor and vivid imagers performed a naming task that involved nonreversed (e.g., JUMP) and reversed (e.g., PMUJ) words (Experiment 1). Poor and vivid imagers were also tested on a naming task that was controlled for verbal ability; all the words were reversed and presentation time was varied (Experiment 2). In both experiments, imaging ability interacted with task difficulty, suggesting that individual differences in imaging ability affect visual word recognition. Specifically, the present data suggest that poor imagers may be less efficient than vivid imagers at processing words analytically. The data are interpreted within a limited-capacity, hybrid, word recognition model, in which words can be processed as either word-level or letter-level codes.It has been demonstrated in a number of studies that subjects' imaging ability affects perceptual and cognitive performance. For example, Wallace (1988) had subjects participate in a visual search task in which they were asked to find embedded objects within pictorial scenes. In general, vivid imagers (as judged by performance on the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire, or VVIQ; Marks, 1973) performed the task better than poor imagers.Vivid imagers also perform better on a gestalt closure task. Wallace (1990) required subjects to identify fragmented stimuli in the Closure Speed Test (Thurstone & Jeffrey, 1966) and in the Street Test (Street, 1931). The greatest number of correct closures was reported by vivid imagers. Also, Wallace ( 1991b) examined proofreading accuracy as a function of imaging ability. Six one-page passages from various texts were prepared in such a way that each contained 26 misspelled words. A misspelled word was produced by substituting a middleposition letter with another letter of either similar or dissimilar shape. The subjects who were judged to be vivid imagers made fewer proofreading errors than did the poor imagers. This effect was qualified by an interaction between imaging ability and letter similarity. When the substitute letter had a shape that was similar to the letter it replaced, the poor imagers made more errors than did the vivid imagers. However, when the substitute letter was dissimilar to the letter it replaced, there were no This research was supported by National Institutes of Health Research Grant AG09282 to the first author. We thank Geoffrey Loftus, Lester Krueger, Peter Dixon, and one anonymous reviewer for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. Also, we thank Tim Weber and Therese Finnan for technical assistance. Address correspondence to P. Allen, Department of Psychology, Cleveland State University, Euclid Ave. at East 24th Street, Cleveland, OH 44115 (e-mail: p.allen@csuohio.edu). differences in proofreading accuracy across imaging ability.In essence, these studies have shown that vivid imagers are more adept in performing a variety of tasks. This may be partly because poor imagers app...

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Adult age differences in letter-level and word-level processing.

Cited by 64 publications

References 30 publications

A Diffusion Model Analysis of the Effects of Aging in the Lexical-Decision Task.

A Diffusion Model Analysis of the Effects of Aging in the Lexical-Decision Task.

Endogenous visuospatial precuing effects as a function of age and task demands

Influence of imaging ability on word transformation

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