Effects of Working Memory Load and Age on the Comprehension of Passive Sentences

Xinmiao Liu

doi:10.5539/ijps.v10n3p13

Abstract

The ability of older adults to comprehend sentences may decline due to the cognitive changes in working memory. Therefore, an increase in working memory demands during sentence comprehension would result in poorer performance among older adults. To test this hypothesis, the present study explored sentence comprehension as a result of manipulations of age and working memory loads using a sentence-picture matching task. 35 older adults and 35 younger adults were required to match Mandarin passive sentences (high working memory load) and active sentences (low working memory load) with pictures. Passive sentences were found to be more difficult than active sentences for all participants. Older adults responded to passive sentences more slowly than younger adults. However, no significant age difference was found in accuracy of responses. Accuracy on passive sentence comprehension was marginally correlated with syntactic complexity effect among older adults. Compared with younger adults, older adults seem to be more disrupted by the increased WM load in passive sentence comprehension, but they can compensate for the decline in the accuracy of comprehension by spending extra time on sentences with high WM load.

Highlights

There is plenty of evidence that the ability to comprehend sentences becomes less accurate and slower among healthy elderly (Caplan, et al, 2011; Stinemorrow, Noh& Shake, 2010; Waters & Caplan, 2005)
According to the Capacity Constrain Theory, the WM resources possessed by individuals are limited and syntactic processing will deteriorate if working memory load is increased by such factors as syntactic complexity (Just & Carpenter, 1992)
This study examined the effects of age and working memory load on the comprehension of Mandarin passive sentences

Summary

Introduction

There is plenty of evidence that the ability to comprehend sentences becomes less accurate and slower among healthy elderly (Caplan, et al, 2011; Stinemorrow, Noh& Shake, 2010; Waters & Caplan, 2005). Previous studies of language comprehension by older adults provide evidence showing that older adults found it difficult to comprehend and process embedded syntactic constructs such as relative clauses as these structures have higher demands for working memory resources (Kemper, 1986). These difficulties can be accounted for as the decline in the ability of older adults to temporarily store or retain in working memory some linguistic elements during sentence processing (King & Just, 1991). If they have sufficient working memory resources, their performance will remain largely intact

Methods

Results

Conclusion