Biomedical subjects

A Wingfield

Publications and source records attributed to A Wingfield.

59 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

PubMedDate not supplied

Multiple memory systems in the processing of speech: evidence from aging.

Young and old adults gave verbatim recall of recorded prose passages that varied in average word predictability and rate of presentation. Subjects were allowed to interrupt the speech passages at points of their choosing for recall of what they had heard on a segment-by-segment basis. For both age groups, the sizes of the segments selected were affected by level of predictability but not by the speech rate of the spoken passages. Subjects tended to interrupt the passages for recall at linguistic constituent boundaries. Recall of the segments was poorer for the elderly adults than for the young adults, with larger age differences for faster speech rates and for passages that were lower in average word predictability. Results are discussed in terms of the recent suggestion that multiple memory representations of a speech message may co-occur briefly in time.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Taking charge of remembering: locus of control and older adults' memory for speech.

The relation between control beliefs and recall of spoken word lists and prose passages was assessed for 32 older adults, ages 62 to 85, in a task where they were given control over presentation of stimuli. They differed in the degree to which they believed that factors within their control (internals) or outside their control (externals) affected their intellectual functioning; they were similar in age, education, vocabulary, and digit span. They were required to stop the speech input at points of their own choosing to recall the stimuli on a segment-by-segment basis. Externals were more likely than internals to make inaccurate predictions of the number of words they could remember and to choose longer segments than they could recall. Results suggest that externals are poorer than internals in monitoring on-line memory processing.

Aged↗

PubMedDate not supplied

The influence of prosodic structure on the interpretation of temporary syntactic ambiguity by young and elderly listeners.

The contribution of prosody to the interpretation of temporary syntactic ambiguity was examined for young and elderly listeners using a sentence-completion task. Temporary syntactic ambiguity refers to cases where it may be temporarily unclear whether a syntactic clause boundary has or has not been reached based on what has been heard in the sentence to that point. Results suggest that both young and elderly adults use a computationally less demanding late-closure parsing strategy whenever possible, but that sentence prosody can override this tendency when an alternative closure position is clearly signaled. Although subtle differences appeared in regard to sentence completion strategies and latencies to completion, results suggest that efficient resolution of syntactic boundary uncertainty and effective use of sentence prosody are two features of language comprehension that remain well-preserved in normal aging.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

An experimental and computational analysis of age differences in the recognition of fragmented pictures: inhibitory connections versus speed of processing.

Young and older adults were tested for the ability to identify degraded pictures presented either in a series of incremental steps with each step increasing the completeness of the visual information (ascending condition) or in one single exposure (fixed condition). Significant interference effects, indicated by a superiority of fixed over ascending presentations, appeared at a lower level of performance for the older adults than for the young adults. This finding was consistent with the notion of an inhibition deficit operating in normal aging. A computer simulation, based on simple connectionist architecture, demonstrated that an age-related inhibition deficit in the identification of fragmented pictures can be produced by slowed processing rates.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Does memory constrain utilization of top-down information in spoken word recognition? Evidence from normal aging.

Young and elderly adults heard recorded words that had been computer-edited from connected speech so as to be heard in isolation from their linguistic surround. Word identification was tested for words in isolation and when heard with increasing amounts of linguistic context that had either preceded or followed them in their original utterances. Although the elderly subjects were poorer in identifying the words in isolation compared to young adults, both age groups showed similar increases in correct word identification as increasing amounts of prior context were presented. By contrast, context that followed the target words was less effective for the elderly subjects than it was for the young. It is argued that a memory trace of the unclear stimulus must be maintained for effective utilization of following context in a retrospective analysis. The elderly subjects' relative inability to utilize following context implicates an age-related memory deficit operating at the sentence level.

Adolescent↗