Linguistic Redundancy and its Effects on Younger and Older Adults’ Real‐Time Comprehension and Memory

Abstract

Redundant modifiers can facilitate referential interpretation by narrowing attention to intended referents. This is intriguing because, on traditional accounts, redundancy should impair comprehension. Little is known, however, about the effects of redundancy on older adults’ comprehension. Older adults may show different patterns due to age‐related decline (e.g., processing speed and memory) or their greater proclivity for linguistic redundancy, as suggested in language production studies. The present study explores the effects of linguistic redundancy on younger and older listeners’ incremental referential processing, judgments of informativity, and downstream memory performance. In an eye tracking task, gaze was monitored as listeners followed instructions from a social robot referring to a unique object within a multi‐object display. Critical trials were varied in terms of modifier type (“…closed/purple/[NONE] umbrella”) and whether displays contained another object matching target properties (closed purple notebook), making modifiers less effective at narrowing attention. Relative to unmodified descriptions, redundant color modifiers facilitated comprehension, particularly when they narrowed attention to a single referent. Descriptions with redundant state modifiers always impaired real‐time comprehension. In contrast, memory measures showed faster recognition of objects previously described with redundant state modifiers. Although color and state descriptions had different effects on referential processing and memory, informativity judgments showed participants perceived them as informationally redundant to the same extent relative to unmodified descriptions. Importantly, the patterns did not differ by listener age. Together, the results show that the effects of linguistic redundancy are stable across adulthood but vary as a function of modifier type, visual context, and the measured phenomenon.

Expertise differences in cognitive interpreting: A meta‐analysis of eye tracking studies across four decades

“…Conversely, other scholars offer a more skeptical stance. Despite the common expectation of experts outperforming novices, studies suggest that there is no significant efficiency difference between them in interpreting, with some skills, such as sight interpreting, potentially plateauing in efficiency after just a year of training (Chmiel & Mazur, 2013; Nour et al, 2019; Saryazdi et al, 2022). The findings reveal that expertise is not the only factor affecting time efficiency in cognitive interpreting, and its impact is intertwined with other variables such as training quality, task nature, and individual cognitive capacities.…”

Color education: A study on methods of influence on memory

“…Several studies also raise concerns about the introduction and implementation of distance education ( Riva et al., 2021 ; Jung et al., 2022 ; Wagner et al., 2022 ). The main challenges refer to emotional tension, lack of social interaction, communication problems, low level of digital education, lack of command of time-management basic skills, and weak or wrongful motivation ( Saryazdi et al., 2022 ). This is what makes us undertake a deep analysis of the distance learning system as an indispensable didactic-and-curricular format under pandemic conditions.…”