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Age-Related Impairments in the Revision of Syntactic Misanalyses: Effects of Prosody

McGill University, dtitone{at}psych.mcgill.ca

Christine K. Koh

Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School

Margaret M. Kjelgaard

Brandeis University

Stephanie Bruce

Brandeis University

Shari R. Speer

Ohio State University

Arthur Wingfield

Brandeis University

Two experiments examined whether young and older adults differ in comprehending sentences that contain temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. Experiment 1 examined age-related differences using the Auditory Moving Window (AMW) task, in which sentences were presented in a segment-by-segment self-paced fashion. Experiment 2 examined age-related differences using a sentence recall task, in which sentences were presented in their entirety. Sentences were constructed to have cooperating prosody (i.e., where prosody is consistent with the syntactic boundaries), baseline prosody (i.e., where prosody is ambiguous in the syntactically ambiguous region), and conflicting prosody (i.e., where cross-splicing relocates the prosodic phrase break at a misleading point in syntactic structure). The results showed that both young and older adults make comparable use of prosodic information to interpret temporary syntactic ambiguities, although younger adults may make use of this information more quickly than older adults. In addition, older adults appeared to be less able than young adults to revise initial syntactic misinterpretations caused by conflicting prosodic information. These results are interpreted with respect to age-related impairments in the allocation of working memory resources and inefficient inhibitory function during spoken language processing.

Key Words: aging • prosody • syntactic ambiguity resolution

Language and Speech, Vol. 49, No. 1, 75-99 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/00238309060490010501


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