Syntactic complexity and elderly adults' prose recall.
Elderly adults in their 70s and 80s and middle-aged adults in their 40s and 50s recalled a series of paragraphs made up of single-clause sentences and sentences with right-branching or left-branching embedded or subordinate clauses. Overall, the middle-aged adults recalled 65% of the propositions regardless of syntactic form. While the elderly adults recalled 43% of the propositions from the single-clause sentences, they recalled 60% of the propositions from the right-branching clauses but only 22% of the propositions from the left-branching clauses. These results, in conjunction with prior research on elderly adults' production and imitation of complex syntactic constructions, demonstrate age-related changes in syntactic processing.
Kemper
S
S
Department of Psychology, University of Kansas, Lawrence 66045.
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007361:Intelligence Tests; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology*