AUTHOR=Ayasse Nicolai D. , Wingfield Arthur 

TITLE=The Two Sides of Linguistic Context: Eye-Tracking as a Measure of Semantic Competition in Spoken Word Recognition Among Younger and Older Adults

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

VOLUME=Volume 14 - 2020

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2020.00132

DOI=10.3389/fnhum.2020.00132

ISSN=1662-5161

ABSTRACT=Studies of spoken word recognition have reliably shown that the both younger and older adults’ recognition of acoustically degraded words is facilitated by the presence of a linguistic context.  Against this benefit, older adults’ word recognition can be differentially hampered by interference from other words that could also fit the context.  These studies have primarily used off-line response measures such as the signal-to-noise ratio needed for a target word to be correctly identified.  Less clear is the locus of these effects; whether facilitation and interference have their influence primarily during response selection, or whether their effects begin to operate even before a sentence-final target word has been uttered.  This question was addressed by tracking 20 younger and 20 older adults’ eye fixations on a visually presented target word that corresponded to the final word of a contextually constraining or neutral sentence, accompanied by a second word on the computer screen that in some cases could also fit the sentence context.  Growth curve analysis of the time-course of eye-gaze on a target word showed facilitation and inhibition effects begin to appear even as a spoken sentence is unfolding in time.  Consistent with an age-related inhibition deficit, older adults’ word recognition was slowed by the presence of a semantic competitor to a degree not observed for younger adults, with this effect operating early in the recognition process.