To predict or not to predict: Age-related differences in the use of sentential context.

Abstract

Older adults (as a group) are less likely than younger adults to engage in an anticipatory mode of language comprehension, failing to successfully pre-activate information about upcoming likely (predictable) words during online processing. To assess (within one set of materials) age-related changes in the use of sentential context to affect processing of predictable words and in the consequences of violating predictions, event-related brain potentials were recorded while older adults read sentences that varied in sentence-level constraint and expectancy of sentence-final words. Strongly constraining sentences were completed by their most expected, predictable words and weakly constraining sentences were completed by their most expected, less predictable words. Both types of sentences also were completed by unexpected (but plausible) words. Older adults showed reduced and delayed effects of sentential context on processing predictable words. Whereas younger adults elicit an enhanced positive ERP (starting around 500 ms post-stimulus onset, largest over prefrontal electrode sites), specifically for unexpected words that violate strong expectancies for a different word, older adults as a group did not exhibit this neural consequence of disconfirmed predictions. Older adults were instead more likely to show a left-lateralized frontal negativity for predictable items. This ERP response has been attributed to processes needed to revisit contextual material in forming an interpretation of message-level meaning, which may be more likely when anticipatory modes of comprehension are not engaged. Taken together, the results suggest that normal aging can affect allocation of resources to different cognitive and neural pathways in achieving comprehension outcomes.

Looking for a Location: Dissociated Effects of Event-Related Plausibility and Verb–Argument Information on Predictive Processing in Aphasia

“…This similarity held even for the time courses for those effects in the bin-by-bin analyses. This finding stands in contrast to some previous findings suggesting that older participants are less likely to engage in prediction during comprehension than younger participants are (DeLong et al, 2012;Federmeier & Kutas, 2005;Wlotko, Federmeier, & Kutas, 2012;Wlotko et al, 2010). One possible reason for this disparity could be that the contexts of prediction in the current study versus those in the previous studies may have different properties.…”

“…Consistent with that possibility, younger adults also predict less when a faster presentation rate reduces the time available to generate predictions (Wlotko & Federmeier, 2015). However, recent work has suggested that the type of contextual constraint is also important for whether ON adults exhibit reduced prediction compared with YN adults: The two groups exhibit much smaller differences for strong-constraint contexts (Wlotko et al, 2012). Perhaps the prediction of an upcoming verbal argument is more akin to predictions licensed by these strong-constraint contexts.…”

Pace Yourself: Intraindividual Variability in Context Use Revealed by Self-paced Event-related Brain Potentials

“…For instance, prediction-related effects are not always observed (see Van Petten & Luka, 2012, for a review), and the benefits and (prediction-related) costs related to context use appear to vary as a function of factors such as such as age (Wlotko, Federmeier, & Kutas, 2012), verbal fluency (Federmeier, et al, 2010; Federmeier, Melennan, Ochoa, & Kutas, 2002), and literacy skill (Huettig & Mishra, 2014). Over and above individual differences, predictive processing may be dependent upon task demands, such as presentation rate (Wlotko & Federmeier, 2015; Camblin et al, 2007).…”

Time for prediction? The effect of presentation rate on predictive sentence comprehension during word-by-word reading

“…Additionally, for both older and younger adults, individuals that show larger effects attributed to anticipatory processing are less likely to elicit brain responses associated with reinterpretation of prior context (Wlotko & Federmeier, 2012a). …”