Verb Recognition Abilities in Young and Older Adults as a Function of Linguistic Presentation Units

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine differences in verb recognition performance according to linguistic presentation units and question types between young and older adults. This study also examined the relationship between verb recognition performance and neuropsychological tests. Methods: A total of 39 participants (21 young adults and 18 old adults) participated in this study. All were administered verb recognition tasks in word and sentence conditions, and three types of recognition questions (presented verb, unpresented-related verb, unpresented-unrelated verb) were implemented. Results: First, the older adults showed significantly lower verb recognition performance than the young adults. Second, there was a significant interaction effect in linguistic presentation units and groups. Post-hoc analysis revealed that young adults’ recognition accuracy was higher in sentence condition compared to word condition, whereas old adults’ accuracy was higher in word condition than the sentence condition. Third, there was a significant main effect of question types. Fourth, in terms of accuracy of recognition questions, unpresented-unrelated verbs showed different tendency results compared to presented and unpresented-related verbs. Lastly, verb recognition performance was significantly correlated with neuropsychological tests. Conclusion: Results showed older adults’ decreased recognition performance due to cognitive decline and revealed the different patterns in recognition abilities according to linguistic presentation units and question types. These results suggest that cognitive load affected verb recognition in both conditions and that the verb recognition task could be implemented to examine older adults’ cognitive abilities.