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 language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 939-948 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | International Psychogeriatrics |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1 Jun 2017 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2017 International Psychogeriatric Association.
Keywords
- Working-memory capacity
- aging
- canonicity of word order
- sentence comprehension
