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- Title
Phrasal Order and Ageing: Does the 'Wrong and Right' Order of Phrases Become Irreversible Over Time?
- Authors
Barton, Hayley; Paterson, Kevin; McGowan, Victoria
- Abstract
Previous research has shown that readers are highly sensitive to word order in common phrases, and show a strong processing preference for such phrases to be presented in a familiar (e.g., fish and chips), rather than an unfamiliar (e.g., chips and fish) order (Siyanova-Chanturia et al., 2011). These findings suggest that the order of words in many common phrases becomes fixed in memory through the experience of reading. Within the present experiment, we used measures of eye movements to assess this word order effect for young adult readers (aged 18-30 years) compared to older adult readers (aged 65+ years). The rationale for this comparison is that older adults may have a stronger processing preference for the familiar over unfamiliar word order as a consequence of their greater experience of reading and, if compared to young adults, they make greater use of contextual knowledge to recognise words. The results show that unfamiliar word order disrupted both early and late processing of phrases relative to familiar word order. However, this effect did not differ across adult age groups. It therefore appears that, once learned, expectancies for words to appear in a certain order in phrases remain stable across the adult lifespan.
- Subjects
RIGHT &; wrong; OLDER people; WORD order (Grammar); TERMS &; phrases; AGE groups
- Publication
Journal of Eye Movement Research, 2019, Vol 12, Issue 7, p285
- ISSN
1995-8692
- Publication type
Article