Effects of age, working memory, and word order on passive-sentence comprehension: Evidence from a verb-final language

Jee Eun Sung, Jae Keun Yoo, Soo Eun Lee, Bora Eom

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

21 Scopus citations

Abstract

Background: The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effects of working-memory (WM) capacity on age-related changes in abilities to comprehend passive sentences when the word order was systematically manipulated. Methods: A total of 134 individuals participated in the study. The sentence-comprehension task consisted of the canonical and non-canonical word-order conditions. A composite measure of WM scores was used as an index of WM capacity. Results: Participants exhibited worse performance on sentences with non-canonical word order than canonical word order. The two-way interaction between age and WM was significant, suggesting that WM effects were greater than age effects on the task. Conclusions: WM capacity effects on passive-sentence comprehension increased dramatically as people aged, suggesting that those who have larger WM capacity are less vulnerable to age-related changes in sentence-comprehension abilities. WM capacity may serve as a cognitive reserve associated with sentence-comprehension abilities for elderly adults.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)939-948
Number of pages10
JournalInternational Psychogeriatrics
Volume29
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jun 2017

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 International Psychogeriatric Association.

Keywords

  • Working-memory capacity
  • aging
  • canonicity of word order
  • sentence comprehension

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Effects of age, working memory, and word order on passive-sentence comprehension: Evidence from a verb-final language'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this