scholarly journals Effects of Differential Presentation of Noun Types on Sentence Processing in Elderly Adults: An Eye-tracking Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 847-862
Author(s):  
Suji Kim ◽  
Jee Eun Sung
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Communication Process ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Lower Accuracy

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to investigate how aging influences sentence processing when noun-phrases are presented differently.Methods: A total of 40 participants participated in the study ranging in age from 19 to 71. All were presented with sentences and pictures under either dative or accusative conditions. After that, they were asked to judge if the sentences were correct or incorrect.Results: First, there were significant differences between the older adults and younger adults in accuracy. The older group showed lower accuracy in the sentence judgment task. Second, there were significant differences between the older adults and younger adults in response time. The older group needed more time due to their lower cognitive resources. They made more errors when accusative noun phrases were provided. Third, the fixation proportion of the target stimulus between regions were significant in both types of dative and accusative noun phrase presentation. The older group showed lower proportions in the last region of the sentence.Conclusion: These results shows that both the elderly and the young gradually deal with the meaning of words through the noun phrase information. However, the elderly showed difficulty in assigning the correct thematic roles by using case-markers, given the lower proportion of fixation in the region where the target stimuli are presented. It is expected that difficulties in the communication process of the elderly will be better understood through this study.

scholarly journals Age differences in the effect of animacy on Mandarin sentence processing

PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. e6437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinmiao Liu ◽  
Wenbin Wang ◽  
Haiyan Wang
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Ageing Population ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Online Processing ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Object Relative

Animate nouns are preferred for grammatical subjects, whereas inanimate nouns are preferred for grammatical objects. Animacy provides important semantic cues for sentence comprehension. However, how individuals’ ability to use this animacy cue changes with advancing age is still not clear. The current study investigated whether older adults and younger adults were differentially sensitive to this semantic constraint in processing Mandarin relative clauses, using a self-paced reading paradigm. The sentences used in the study contained subject relative clauses or object relative clauses and had animate or inanimate subjects. The results indicate that the animacy manipulation affected the younger adults more than the older adults in online processing. Younger adults had longer reading times for all segments in subject relative clauses than in object relative clauses when the subjects were inanimate, whereas there was no significant difference in reading times between subject and object relative clauses when the subjects were animate. In the older group, animacy was not found to influence the processing difficulty of subject relative clauses and object relative clauses. Compared with younger adults, older adults were less sensitive to animacy constraints in relative clause processing. The findings indicate that the use of animacy cues became less efficient in the ageing population. The results can be explained by the capacity constrained comprehension theory, according to which older adults have greater difficulty in integrating semantic information with syntactic processing due to the lack of sufficient cognitive resources.

scholarly journals Should the family or the state provide support for the elderly people? Findings from a two-generational Finnish study

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 138-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antti O. Tanskanen ◽  
Johanna Kallio ◽  
Mirkka Danielsbacka
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Elderly People ◽  
Elderly Care ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
The State ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Public Opinions ◽  
The Family ◽  
Nationally Representative

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate public opinions towards elderly care. The authors analysed respondents’ opinions towards financial support, practical help and care for elderly people. Design/methodology/approach The authors used nationally representative data collected in Finland in 2012. Respondents represent an older generation (born between 1945 and 1950, n=1,959) and their adult children (born between 1962 and 1993, n=1,652). Findings First, the authors compared the opinions of older and younger Finns but did not find that older adults were more likely than younger adults support the state responsibility, or vice versa. It was also when only actual parent-child dyads (n=779) from same families were included. Next, the authors found that several socioeconomic and family-related variables were associated with public opinions of elderly care in both generations. For instance, in both generations lower-income individuals supported the state’s responsibility more compared to their better-off counterparts. Originality/value The study provides important knowledge on attitudes towards elderly care using unique two-generational data of younger and older adults.

Biomechanical constraints to stair negotiation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constantinos Maganaris ◽  
Vasilios Baltzopoulos ◽  
David Jones ◽  
Irene Di Giulio ◽  
Neil Reeves ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Dynamic Stability ◽  
Ankle Joint ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
The Body ◽  
Centre Of Mass ◽  
Centre Of Pressure ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Stair Negotiation ◽  
Biomechanical Constraints

This chapter discusses strategies that older and younger people employ to negotiate stairs based on experiments performed on an instrumented staircase in lab environment aiming at identifying ways to reduce stair fall risk for the elderly. Stair negotiation was found to be more demanding for the knee and ankle joint muscles in older than younger adults, with the demand increasing further when the step-rise was higher. During descent of stairs with higher step-rises, older adults shifted the centre of mass (COM) posteriorly, behind the centre of pressure (COP) to prevent forward falling. A decreased step-going resulted in a slower descent of the centre of mass in the older adults and standing on a single leg for longer than younger adults. A greater reliance on the handrails and rotation of the body in the direction of the handrail was also observed when the step-going was decreased during descent, which allowed this task to be performed with better dynamic stability, by maintaining the COM closer to the COP. These findings have important implications for stair design and exercise programs aiming at improving safety on stairs for the elderly.

Effects of Metabolic Syndrome on Language Functions in Aging

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalia Cahana-Amitay ◽  
Avron Spiro ◽  
Jason A. Cohen ◽  
Abigail C. Oveis ◽  
Emmanuel A. Ojo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Metabolic Syndrome ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Lexical Retrieval ◽  
Language Performance ◽  
Language Functions ◽  
The Metabolic Syndrome ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Lower Accuracy

AbstractThis study explored effects of the metabolic syndrome (MetS) on language in aging. MetS is a constellation of five vascular and metabolic risk factors associated with the development of chronic diseases and increased risk of mortality, as well as brain and cognitive impairments. We tested 281 English-speaking older adults aged 55–84, free of stroke and dementia. Presence of MetS was based on the harmonized criteria (Alberti et al., 2009). Language performance was assessed by measures of accuracy and reaction time on two tasks of lexical retrieval and two tasks of sentence processing. Regression analyses, adjusted for age, education, gender, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, demonstrated that participants with MetS had significantly lower accuracy on measures of lexical retrieval (action naming) and sentence processing (embedded sentences, both subject and object relative clauses). Reaction time was slightly faster on the test of embedded sentences among those with MetS. MetS adversely affects the language performance of older adults, impairing accuracy of both lexical retrieval and sentence processing. This finding reinforces and extends results of earlier research documenting the negative influence of potentially treatable medical conditions (diabetes, hypertension) on language performance in aging. The unanticipated finding that persons with MetS were faster in processing embedded sentences may represent an impairment of timing functions among older individuals with MetS. (JINS, 2015, 21, 116–125)

scholarly journals Older and Younger Adults Perform Similarly in an Iterated Trust Game

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maïka Telga ◽  
Juan Lupiáñez
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Impression Formation ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Trust Game ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Categorical Information ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact

In social contexts, aging is typically associated with a greater reliance on heuristics, such as categorical information and stereotypes. The present research examines younger and older adults’ use of individuating and age-based categorical information when gauging whether or not to trust unfamiliar targets. In an adaptation of the iterated Trust Game, participants had to predict the cooperative tendencies of their partners to earn economic rewards in first encounters – in a context in which they knew nothing about their partners, and across repeated interactions – in a context in which they could learn the individual cooperative tendency of each partner. In line with previous research, we expected all participants to rely on stereotypes in first encounters, and progressively learn to disregard stereotypes to focus on individuating behavioral cues across repeated interactions. Moreover, we expected older participants to rely more on social categories than younger participants. Our results indicate that overall, both the elderly and the young adopted an individuating approach to predict the cooperative behaviors of their partners across trials. However, older adults more consistently relied on gender (but not age) stereotypes to make cooperation decisions at zero acquaintance. The impact of context, motivation, and relevance of categorical information in impression formation is discussed.

scholarly journals Auditory and Visual Integration for Emotion Recognition and Compensation for Degraded Signals are Preserved With Age

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 233121652110453
Author(s):  
Minke J. de Boer ◽  
Tim Jürgens ◽  
Deniz Başkent ◽  
Frans W. Cornelissen
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Elderly Population ◽  
Recognition Accuracy ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
The Other ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Visual Integration ◽  
Sensory Impairments

Since emotion recognition involves integration of the visual and auditory signals, it is likely that sensory impairments worsen emotion recognition. In emotion recognition, young adults can compensate for unimodal sensory degradations if the other modality is intact. However, most sensory impairments occur in the elderly population and it is unknown whether older adults are similarly capable of compensating for signal degradations. As a step towards studying potential effects of real sensory impairments, this study examined how degraded signals affect emotion recognition in older adults with normal hearing and vision. The degradations were designed to approximate some aspects of sensory impairments. Besides emotion recognition accuracy, we recorded eye movements to capture perceptual strategies for emotion recognition. Overall, older adults were as good as younger adults at integrating auditory and visual information and at compensating for degraded signals. However, accuracy was lower overall for older adults, indicating that aging leads to a general decrease in emotion recognition. In addition to decreased accuracy, older adults showed smaller adaptations of perceptual strategies in response to video degradations. Concluding, this study showed that emotion recognition declines with age, but that integration and compensation abilities are retained. In addition, we speculate that the reduced ability of older adults to adapt their perceptual strategies may be related to the increased time it takes them to direct their attention to scene aspects that are relatively far away from fixation.

Role of Emotion and Cognition on Age Differences in the Framing Effect

2017 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bingyan Pu ◽  
Huamao Peng ◽  
Shiyong Xia
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Emotional Arousal ◽  
Framing Effect ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Age Difference ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Life Saving

Framing effect studies indicate that individuals are risk averse for decisions framed as gains but risk-seeking for decisions framed as losses. Findings of age-related differences in susceptibility to framing are mixed. In the current study, we examined emotional arousal in two decision tasks (life saving vs. money gambling) to evaluate the effects of emotion on age differences in the framing effect. When cognitive abilities and styles were controlled, there was a framing effect in the younger group in the life-saving task, a high-emotional arousal task, while older adults did not display this classic framing effect pattern. They showed risk aversion in both positive and negative framing. Age differences existed in the framing effect. Conversely, younger and older adults in the money-gambling task both displayed the framing effect; there was no age difference. When the cognitive abilities were not controlled, the pattern of results in the high-emotional arousal task remained unchanged, while greater framing effects were found, from the perspective of effect size, for older than younger adults in the low-emotional arousal task. Limited cognitive resources would not hamper older adults’ performances when their emotional arousal was high. However, older adults with low-level emotional arousal were more susceptible than younger adults to framing because of declining cognitive capacities. This implied the importance of emotion in older adults’ decision making and supported the selective engagement hypothesis.

Elderly Care Law

2018 ◽  
pp. 99-112
Author(s):  
Richard Biram
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Elder Abuse ◽  
Elderly Care ◽  
Geriatric Medicine ◽  
General Medicine ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Medical Problems ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Assessment And Treatment ◽  
Vulnerable Adults

The Royal College of Physicians describes geriatric medicine as a branch of general medicine that is concerned with the clinical, preventative, remedial, and social aspects of illness in older age. The constellation of medical problems encountered by the elderly patient requires a holistic, team-based approach to care, utilizing a process known as the ‘comprehensive geriatric assessment’. This is an evidence-based approach to the assessment and treatment of older adults, which returns more patients to their own homes, and reduces inpatient mortality compared with standard ward care. Legal issues in the care of older adults are essentially the same as in younger adults. However, some areas that feature more frequently in the care of the elderly, which are considered further in this chapter, are age discrimination, elder abuse, safeguarding of vulnerable adults, deprivation of liberty, and the regulations related to driving in the elderly population.

scholarly journals Processing Binding Relations in Specific Language Impairment

2016 ◽  
Vol 59 (6) ◽  
pp. 1384-1394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard G. Schwartz ◽  
Arild Hestvik ◽  
Liat Seiger-Gardner ◽  
Diana Almodovar
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Core Knowledge ◽  
Interference Effects ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Intact Core

Purpose This sentence processing experiment examined the abilities of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with typical language development (TD) to establish relations between pronouns or reflexives and their antecedents in real time. Method Twenty-two children with SLI and 24 age-matched children with TD (7;3–10;11 [years;months]) participated in a cross-modal picture priming experiment to determine whether they selectively activated the correct referent at the pronoun or reflexive in sentences. Triplets of auditory sentences, identical except for the presence of a pronoun, a reflexive, or a noun phrase along with a picture probe were used. Results The children with TD were slightly more accurate in their animacy judgments of pictures, but the groups exhibited the same reaction time (RT) pattern. Both groups were slower for sentences with pronouns than with reflexives or noun phrases. The children with SLI had longer RTs than their peers with TD. Conclusions Children with SLI activated only the appropriate antecedent at the pronoun or reflexive, reflecting intact core knowledge of binding as was true for their TD peers. The overall slower RT for children with SLI suggests that any deficit may be the result of processing deficits, perhaps attributable to interference effects.

Pain and Addiction in Older Adults (DRAFT)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelly A. Buckalew
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Physical Examination ◽  
Geriatric Patients ◽  
Substance Misuse ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Opioid Misuse ◽  
Patient History ◽  
Geriatric Population ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Tabular Format

Addressing unique effects of both addiction and analgesia on older adults, this chapter defines the geriatric population and proceeds to discuss the recognition of addiction or substance misuse in it. There is little argument that the elderly have special diagnostic concerns and management needs that are imposed upon those of younger adults. The concept of the pain signature is introduced as a measure of the functions with which the individual’s pain interferes. Four instruments serving as diagnostic aids are included in tabular format: the pain signature elements; a list of recommended patient history queries; suggested components of the review of systems; and special components of the physical examination. The tables are geared specifically toward geriatric patients. The two central themes of the chapter are treatment of pain, and the treatment of opioid misuse and addiction.

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