Abstract
The cognitive ability of older adults declines with age, while the language processing experience becomes more abundant. Word recognition is one of the most fundamental abilities in language processing, but how the interaction of cognitive aging and language experience affects word recognition in older adults is still a complex issue. This study focuses on the influence of two factors, age of acquisition (AoA) and parts of speech on Chinese word recognition in older adults. In Experiment 1, we employed a context-free lexical decisions task to compare the differences of word recognition between young and older adults at the conditions of different AoAs and parts of speech. In Experiment 2, participants were required to perform a sentence reading task in order to examine the above effects with contextual involvement, and their eye movements were tracked and analyzed. Combining the results of the two experiments, we found a greater AoA effect in older adults compared to young adults. This effect primarily manifested as a decline in processing efficiency for late-acquired words and was already evident in the early stage of word recognition. In addition, only the older adults exhibit differences in the processing of distinct word components, indicating a progressive pattern of increasing difficulty from nouns to verbs and subsequently to adjectives. The findings suggest that older adults experience a heightened exacerbation of word processing difficulties.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The data that support the findings of this article are openly available at https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8201626.
References
Barber, H. A., Otten, L. J., Kousta, S.-T., & Vigliocco, G. (2013). Concreteness in word processing: ERP and behavioral effects in a lexical decision task. Brain and Language, 125(1), 47–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2013.01.005
Barry, C., Johnston, R. A., & Wood, R. F. (2006). Effects of age of acquisition, age, and repetition priming on object naming. Visual Cognition, 13(7–8), 911–927. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506280544000101
Belke, E., Brysbaert, M., Meyer, A. S., & Ghyselinck, M. (2005). Age of acquisition effects in picture naming: Evidence for a lexical-semantic competition hypothesis. Cognition, 96(2), B45–B54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2004.11.006
Brysbaert, M., & Ghyselinck, M. (2006). The effect of age of acquisition: Partly frequency related, partly frequency independent. Visual Cognition, 13(7–8), 992–1011.
Burke, D. M., MacKay, D. G., & James, L. E. (2000). Theoretical approaches to language and aging. Models of cognitive aging (pp. 204–237). Oxford University Press.
Catling, J. C., & Elsherif, M. M. (2020). The hunt for the age of acquisition effect: It’s in the links! Acta Psychologica, 209, 103138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2020.103138
Catling, J. C., Pymont, C., Johnston, R. A., Elsherif, M. M., Clark, R., & Kendall, E. (2021). Age of acquisition effects in recognition without identification tasks. Memory, 29(5), 662–674. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2021.1931695
Chai, J. H., Low, H. M., Wong, T. P., Onnis, L., & Mayor, J. (2021). Extra-linguistic modulation of the english noun-bias: Evidence from Malaysian bilingual infants and toddlers. Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science, 5(1), 49–64. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41809-021-00078-5
Chalard, M., Bonin, P., Méot, A., Boyer, B., & Fayol, M. (2003). Objective age-of-acquisition (AoA) norms for a set of 230 object names in French: Relationships with psycholinguistic variables, the english data from Morrison et al. (1997), and naming latencies. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 15(2), 209–245. https://doi.org/10.1080/09541440244000076
Chang, Y.-N., & Lee, C.-Y. (2020). Age of acquisition effects on traditional Chinese character naming and lexical decision. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 27(6), 1317–1324. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-020-01787-8
Chen, Y., & Zhu, L. (2014). Associations of body parts and early-learned mandarin verbs and their effect on aoa of these verbs. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 46(7), 912–921. https://doi.org/10.3724/SP.J.1041.2014.00912
Colombo, L., & Burani, C. (2002). The influence of age of acquisition, root frequency, and context availability in processing nouns and verbs. Brain and Language, 81(1), 398–411.
Cordier, F., Croizet, J.-C., & Rigalleau, F. (2013). Comparing nouns and verbs in a lexical task. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 42(1), 21–35. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-012-9202-x
Cortese, M. J., Toppi, S., Khanna, M. M., & Santo, J. B. (2020). AoA effects in reading aloud and lexical decision: Locating the (semantic) locus in terms of the number of backward semantic associations. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 73(11), 2036–2044. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021820940302
Dirix, N., & Duyck, W. (2017). An eye movement corpus study of the age-of-acquisition effect. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24(6), 1915–1921. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-017-1233-8
Ellis, A. W., & Lambon Ralph, M. A. (2000). Age of acquisition effects in adult lexical processing reflect loss of plasticity in maturing systems: Insights from connectionist networks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 1103–1123. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.26.5.1103
Elsherif, M. M., & Catling, J. C. (2022). Age of acquisition effects on the decomposition of compound words. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 34(3), 325–338. https://doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2021.2013246
Elsherif, M. M., Preece, E., & Catling, J. C. (2023). Age-of-acquisition effects: A literature review. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 49(5), 812–847. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001215
Faroqi-Shah, Y., & Gehman, M. (2021). The role of processing speed and cognitive control on word retrieval in aging and aphasia. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 64(3), 949–964. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00326
Feng, S., Qi, R., Yang, J., Yu, A., & Yang, Y. (2020). Neural correlates for nouns and verbs in phrases during syntactic and semantic processing: An fMRI study. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 53, 100860. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2019.100860
Feng, S., Weng, X., Sheng, X., Lin, C., Xiang, H., & Yang, Y. (2007). Cerebral responses to the visually presented processing of nouns, verbs and adjectives in mandarin Chinese: A functional MRI evaluation. Journal of Clinical Rehabilitative Tissue Engineering Research, 11(22), 4333–4336. https://doi.org/10.3321/j.issn:1673-8225.2007.22.023
Li, P., Jin, Z., & Tan, L. H. (2004). Neural representations of nouns and verbs in Chinese: An fMRI study. NeuroImage, 21(4), 1533–1541. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2003.10.044
Li, S., Li, L., Wang, J., McGowan, V. A., & Paterson, K. B. (2018). Effects of word length on eye guidance differ for young and older Chinese readers. Psychology and Aging, 33(4), 685–692. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000258
Lou, H., Li, C., & Zhang, Q. (2019). Distinct effects of age of acquisition in Chinese object and action picture naming: An ERP study. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 51(2), 143–153. https://doi.org/10.3724/sp.J.1041.2019.00143
Maas, C. J. M., & Hox, J. J. (2005). Sufficient Sample Sizes for Multilevel Modeling. Methodology, 1(3), 86–92. https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-2241.1.3.86
Mackay, A. J., Connor, L. T., Albert, M. L., & Obler, L. K. (2002). Noun and verb retrieval in healthy aging. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 8(6), 764–770. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355617702860040
Marina, B., Alfonso, C., Emily, G., Alvaro, P.-L., & Rebecca, S. (2008). Concepts are more than percepts: The case of action verbs. The Journal of Neuroscience, 28(44), 11347. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3039-08.2008
Morrison, C. M., Chappell, T. D., & Ellis, A. W. (1997). Age of acquisition norms for a large set of object names and their relation to adult estimates and other variables. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 50(3), 528–559. https://doi.org/10.1080/027249897392017
Morrison, C. M., Hirsh, K. W., Chappell, T., & Ellis, A. W. (2002). Age and age of acquisition: An evaluation of the cumulative frequency hypothesis. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 14(4), 435–459. https://doi.org/10.1080/09541440143000159
Newman, R. S., & German, D. J. (2005). Life span effects of lexical factors on oral naming. Language and Speech, 48(2), 123–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309050480020101
Paterson, K. B., McGowan, V. A., Warrington, K. L., Li, L., Li, S., Xie, F., Chang, M., Zhao, S., Pagán, A., White, S. J., & Wang, J. (2020). Effects of Normative Aging on Eye Movements during Reading. Vision, 4(1), 7. https://doi.org/10.3390/vision4010007
Pezzuti, L., Dawe, J., & Borghi, A. M. (2021). Does mastering of abstract words decline with age? Educational Gerontology, 47(12), 527–542. https://doi.org/10.1080/03601277.2021.2008709
Paul, W. (2010). Adjectives in Mandarin Chinese: The rehabilitation of a much ostracized category. In P.C. Hofherr, & O Matushansky (Eds), Adjectives: Formal analyses in syntax and semantics (pp. 115–151).
Ratcliff, R., Thapar, A., Gomez, P., & McKoon, G. (2004). A Diffusion Model Analysis of the Effects of Aging in the Lexical-Decision Task. Psychology and Aging, 19, 278–289. https://doi.org/10.1037/0882-7974.19.2.278
Reifegerste, J., Meyer, A. S., Zwitserlood, P., & Ullman, M. T. (2021). Aging affects steaks more than knives: Evidence that the processing of words related to motor skills is relatively spared in aging. Brain and Language, 218, 104941. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2021.104941
Robert, C., & Rico Duarte, L. (2016). Semantic Richness and Aging: The Effect of Number of Features in the Lexical Decision Task. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 45(2), 359–365. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-015-9352-8
Steyvers, M., & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2005). The large-scale structure of semantic networks: Statistical analyses and a model of semantic growth. 29(1), 41–78. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog2901_3
Sun, L. (2020). Flexibility in the Parts-of-Speech System of Classical Chinese. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110660791
Veldre, A., Wong, R., & Andrews, S. (2022). Predictability effects and parafoveal processing in older readers. Psychology and Aging, 37, 222–238. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000659
Veríssimo, J., Verhaeghen, P., Goldman, N., Weinstein, M., & Ullman, M. T. (2022). Evidence that ageing yields improvements as well as declines across attention and executive functions. Nature Human Behaviour, 6(1), 97–110. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01169-7
Wang, J., Chen, B., & Jiang, X. (2024). Age of acquisition effects in Chinese two-character compound words: A megastudy of eye movements during reading. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 31, 166–175. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02329-8
Yan, G., Xiong, J., Zang, C., Yu, L., Cui, L., & Bai, X. (2013). Review of Eye-movement Measures in Reading Research. Advances in Psychological Science, 21(4), 589–605. https://doi.org/10.3724/SP.J.1042.2013.00589
Zhang, J., Warrington, K. L., Li, L., Pagán, A., Paterson, K. B., White, S. J., & McGowan, V. A. (2022). Are older adults more risky readers? Evidence from Meta-Analysis. Psychology and Aging, 37(2), 239–259. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000522
Zhang, Y., Wang, K., Yue, C., Mo, N., Wu, D., Wen, X., & Qiu, J. (2018). The motor features of action verbs: FMRI evidence using picture naming. Brain and Language, 179, 22–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2018.02.002
Zhao, S., Li, L., Chang, M., Xu, Q., Zhang, K., Wang, J., & Paterson, K. B. (2019). Older adults make greater use of word predictability in Chinese reading. Psychology and Aging, 34, 780–790. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000382
Ziaei, M., Bonyadi, M. R., & Reutens, D. C. (2021). Age-related differences in structural and functional prefrontal networks during a logical reasoning task. Brain Imaging and Behavior, 15(2), 1085–1102. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-020-00315-5
Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32371112).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Zining Wang: Investigation; Data curation; formal analysis; visualization; writing – original draft and editing. Lina Zhang: Investigation; data curation; formal analysis; methodology; writing – original draft. Bin Xuan: Conceptualization; data curation; methodology; supervision; validation; writing – original draft, review and editing; funding acquisition. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethics approval
All experimental procedures were approved by the institution ethics committee (AHNU-ET-2021027). All participants were at least 18 years old and have signed informed consent forms before the experiment began.
Consent to participate
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Wang, Z., Zhang, L. & Xuan, B. Age-related Chinese word recognition across different AoA and parts of speech. Curr Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-05794-z
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-05794-z