Online Grammaticality Judgments in French Young and Older Adults

Abstract

Background/Study Context: A goal of language and aging research is to determine the nature of change in language-processing skills. In this study the authors examine the role of age and use of cues (e.g., word order, verbal agreement, sentence structure) on online sentence processing. Methods: French young and older adults were asked to detect grammatical violations in sentences as quickly as possible. Detection times were analyzed as a function of participants’ age and sentence characteristics (i.e., violation type, span, and position). Results: Above and beyond main effects of participant's age and linguistic features, results showed age-related differences in effects of linguistic cues on sentence processing and important individual differences during aging in hierarchies of cue strength. Conclusion: Young and older adults use similar linguistic cues in the online process, but loss of cognitive resources with age shows a cost of cue use and a greater use of context.