Abstract
When viewed cross-sectionally, aging seems to negatively affect speech comprehension. However, aging is a heterogeneous process, and variability among older adults is typically large. In this study, we investigated language comprehension as a function of individual differences in older adults. Specifically, we tested whether hearing thresholds, working memory, inhibition, and individual alpha frequency would predict event-related potential amplitudes in response to classic psycholinguistic manipulations at the sentence level. Twenty-nine healthy older adults (age range 61–76 years) listened to English sentences containing reduced relative clauses and object-relative clauses while their electroencephalogram was recorded. We found that hearing thresholds and working memory predicted P600 amplitudes early during reduced relative clause processing, while individual alpha frequency predicted P600 amplitudes at a later point in time. The results suggest that participants with better hearing and larger working memory capacity simultaneously activated both the preferred and the dispreferred interpretation of reduced relative clauses, while participants with worse hearing and smaller working memory capacity only activated the preferred interpretation. They also suggest that participants with a higher individual alpha frequency had a higher likelihood of successfully reanalysing the sentence toward the reduced relative clause reading than participants with a lower individual alpha frequency. By contrast, we found no relationship between object-relative clause processing and working memory or hearing thresholds. Taken together, the results support the view that older adults employ different strategies during auditory sentence processing dependent on their hearing and cognitive abilities and that there is no single ability that uniformly predicts sentence processing outcomes.
Highlights
IntroductionThe reasons are manifold: sensory degradation occurs as hearing loss develops and cognitive resources dwindle as brain structure and function succumb to age-related decline
There is overwhelming evidence that aging negatively affects speech comprehension
For the Linear mixed effects models (LMEMs) with repeated contrasts used to test for differences in the acceptability ratings between the conditions in the reduced relative clause (RRC) paradigm, the conditions were ordered as follows: We expected the lowest ratings for the grammatically incorrect IVWR sentences, the second-lowest ratings for the temporarily ambiguous to ungrammatical (IVWR) and dispreferred (TVRR) sentences, the second-highest ratings for the TVDO sentences, and the highest ratings for the IVCO sentences
Summary
The reasons are manifold: sensory degradation occurs as hearing loss develops and cognitive resources dwindle as brain structure and function succumb to age-related decline. Sentence Processing in Older Adults comprehension in old age, key abilities that support speech comprehension in difficult listening situations need to be identified, which is one of the declared goals of Cognitive Hearing Science (Arlinger et al, 2009). In this field of research, difficult listening situations have mostly been operationalized by introducing acoustic degradations to the speech signal, such as introducing noise or removing spectral content of the signal. Though qualitatively distinct from acoustic degradation, this could arguably be viewed as rendering a listening situation more adverse
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