The influences of inter- and intra-individual differences on context effects for young and older adults were examined. Results of a semantic priming task revealed two subsets of older adults who were markedly different in terms of response latency, consistency of responding, and magnitude of priming. Examination of individual response distributions indicated that (a) age differences in priming were localized to trials representing subjects' slowest responses and were eliminated for their fastest responses and (b) inconsistently responding older individuals contributed disproportionately to age differences in priming. The results are interpreted in terms of an interactive-compensatory model in which the ability to sustain attention is related to both priming and word recognition. It is concluded that the failure to examine individual differences may be contributing to the discrepant results in the literature.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Scope of word meaning activation during sentence processing by young and older adults.

In a naming experiment, we examined word meaning activation on-line during sentence processing by younger and older adults. Sentences were biased to either the most or least frequently used meaning of a sentence-final ambiguous word. In order to determine the scope of initial meaning activation, targets represented either high- or low-salient semantic relationships to a single sense of the ambiguous word in context. Both age groups evidenced context-dependent activation of word meaning. In addition, context activated a wide scope of meaning that included both high- and low-salience aspects of the ambiguous words. These results contradict predictions based on the inhibition deficit hypothesis (Hasher & Zacks, 1988). However, they are compatible with an interactive activation model of language comprehension that does not discriminate among age groups.

Adult↗