Adult age differences in sensitivity to semantic structure of prose.

Petros, Tom; Tabor, Lila; Cooney, Teresa M.; Chabot, Robert J.

doi:10.1037/0012-1649.19.6.907

Cited by 17 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…There were no differences, however, among our three age groups in vocabulary score from the WAIS-R. Findings of no age differences, or of older adult advantage on the WAIS-R, are also quite typical (e.g., Gick et al, 1988;Petros, Tabor, Cooney, & Chabot, 1983).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 56%

Telling tales: Aging, working memory, and the narrative cohesion of story retellings.

Pratt

Boyes²,

Robins³

et al. 1989

Developmental Psychology

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This study investigated adult age differences in the cohesion of narrative retellings in both the reference and conjunction discourse systems and explored the role of information-processing factors in accounting for any such differences. Twenty Ss in each of the age groups 18-25, 26-55, and 60-87 either read a story or its parallel cartoon version, then retold it twice. Stories were coded for recall, clarity of referencing, and types of propositional connectives. We also obtained Daneman's (1980) measure of sentence memory span. The oldest group scored significantly lower on the memory span measure, recalled less story information, and made more referential errors in retellings. There were no age differences in complexity of conjunction usage. Working memory span scores partly accounted for the differences observed in referential quality both within and between age groups. Results are generally consistent with an information-processing account of story telling and aging.Research on the development of narrative skills has focused to date on the earlier portion of the life span. It has demonstrated that younger children frequently have difficulties managing the systems of cohesion that serve to tie the propositions of a story together and make it a text (e.g., Piaget, 1926;Pratt & MacKenzie-Keating, 1985). However, despite some interest in the role of narrative in the lives of older adults (e.g., Mergler, Faust, & Goldstein, 1985), so far there has been little detailed study of narrative cohesion during the later portions of the life span.Halliday and Hasan (1976) described a series of cohesion systems in English, of which the most thoroughly studied is reference. A number of studies of children have shown that preschoolers show some rudimentary mastery of aspects of the reference system, such as pronouns or the article system. However, they have considerably more difficulty than adult narrators in making clear the systematic links between earlier and later text elements (Menig-Peterson & McCabe, 1978;Zehler & Brewer, 1982). In particular, younger children show difficulties introducing and marking new referents appropriately (e.g., Warden, 1976) and frequently produce ambiguous pronouns or terms that could refer to more than one previous referent, thus con-This research was supported by grants from Wilfrid Laurier University and from Mount Saint Vincent University. Portions of these findings were reported at the Canadian Psychological Association Meetings, Vancouver, British Columbia, June 1987. We thank Kathleen Kitching and Vince Walsh for their help with stimulus materials and data analysis as well as the participants of this research for their good humor and interest.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 56%

Telling tales: Aging, working memory, and the narrative cohesion of story retellings.

Pratt

Boyes²,

Robins³

et al. 1989

Developmental Psychology

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show abstract

“…The present study found that age differences were similar at all levels of importance, regardless of the verbal ability of the subjects. The major methodological differences between the two (Byrd, 1985;Spilich, 1983), Meyer's method (Zelinski et al, 1984), and Johnson's method of rating idea-unit importance (Petros, Tabor, et al, 1983;Surber et al, 1984).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of text genre and verbal ability on adult age differences in sensitivity to test structure.

Petros¹,

Norgaard²,

Olson³

et al. 1989

Psychology and Aging

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The present study examined the effects of verbal ability and text genre on adult age differences in sensitivity to the semantic structure of prose. Young and older adults of low or high verbal ability heard narrative and expository passages at different presentation rates. The results demonstrated that older adults recalled less than younger adults and that age differences in recall were larger for low-verbal adults and expository texts. However, subjects from all groups favored the main ideas in their recalls for both types of passages. The results indicated that adult age similarities in the ability to focus on the main ideas when processing prose was not compromised by the verbal ability of the subjects or the organization of the passages used. However, the results also demonstrate how the characteristics of the learner and the characteristics of the text modulate the size of the age differences observed.

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“…son (1988) have pointed out, there is often a noticeable absence of complaints by elderly research subjects about their everyday language comprehension. By contrast, several laboratory studies have reported that older adults show poorer memory than the young for spoken materials (Cohen, 1979;Dixon, Simon, Nowak, & Hultsch, 1982;Petros, Tabor, Cooney, & Chabot, 1983;Taub, 1979). In particular, older adults have been shown to be especially disadvantaged relative to young adults when very rapid presentation rates are used (Stine & Wingfield, 1987;Stine et al, 1986;Wingfield et al, 1985).…”

mentioning

confidence: 92%

Speech-processing capacity in young and older adults: A dual-task study.

Tun¹,

Wingfield²,

Stine³

1991

Psychology and Aging

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Adult age differences in processing speech were examined with a dual-task paradigm. Subjects listened to spoken passages for later recall while performing a concurrent reaction time task intended to index cognitive capacity usage on the speech memory task. Age differences in secondary task decision latencies were eliminated when subgroups of young and older subjects were matched on working memory span. These findings are interpreted as showing that an age-related reduction in working memory efficiency contributes to age differences in processing discourse for memory.

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Adult age differences in sensitivity to semantic structure of prose.

Cited by 17 publications

References 19 publications

Telling tales: Aging, working memory, and the narrative cohesion of story retellings.

Telling tales: Aging, working memory, and the narrative cohesion of story retellings.

Effects of text genre and verbal ability on adult age differences in sensitivity to test structure.

Speech-processing capacity in young and older adults: A dual-task study.

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