DISCOURSE PROCESSING ABILITIES IN AGEING: INFLUENCE OF WORKING MEMORY CAPACITY ON REFERENCE RESOLUTION

Abstract

Maintaining health and quality of life into old age is a critical issue facing society today. Language, and in particular language comprehension, is vulnerable to the processes of ageing (Au, Albert, & Obler, 1989; Kynette & Kemper, 1986; Nicholas, Obler, Albert, & Goodglass, 1985; Shewan & Henderson, 1988). An improved understanding of language processing and ageing will assist in distinguishing language difficulties in normal ageing from those in pathological ageing and aphasia (Maxim & Bryan, 1994) and, potentially, optimises communication throughout life. The current thesis focuses on a specific component of language comprehension—anaphora resolution. Anaphora resolution occurs frequently in everyday discourse and has been reported to decline with ageing (Cohen, 1979; Light & Capps, 1986; Ulatowska, Hayashi, Cannito, & Fleming, 1986). This thesis explored anaphora resolution relative to two key variables: ageing and working memory. Ageing was chosen as a variable as anaphora resolution has been shown to be affected by age (Cohen, 1979; Light & Capps, 1986; Ulatowska et al., 1986). Working memory was chosen as working memory is thought to underlie key aspects of discourse comprehension such as building a mental structure of discourse and updating the information (Brebion, 2003; Hasher & Zacks, 1988; Radvansky, Copeland, & Hippel, 2010; Radvansky, Lynchard, & von Hippel, 2009). 1 Anaphora resolution is the process of finding what/whom an anaphora refers to in a discourse. Anaphora is the most common type of reference in English that is used to refer to discourse entities that have been previously mentioned in the discourse. For example, in the sentence I bought a sandwich and ate it immediately, it is an anaphoric pronoun referring back to sandwich. Sandwich is the referent of the anaphora. Further information about anaphoric references and anaphora resolution can be found on page 28.