Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Hyphens for disambiguating phrases: effectiveness for young and older adults

  • Published:
Reading and Writing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether hyphens that disambiguate phrasing in ambiguous sentences influence reading rate and reading comprehension for younger and older adults. Moreover, as working memory (WM) has been implicated in age-related changes in sentence comprehension for both auditory and written materials, we asked if it contributed to comprehension of our sentences with hyphenated and non-hyphenated ambiguous noun phrases (NPs), predicting that the hyphens would reduce WM load. Twenty younger (M = 24 years) and 20 older (M = 73 years) adults read sentences with either ambiguous or non-ambiguous NPs that were either hyphenated or not. Both reading times for the sentences and accuracy on Yes/No questions were measured. Results indicated that younger adults read sentences more rapidly than the older participants whether sentences were presented word-by-word or as complete sentences. Both younger and older adults read sentences with ambiguous hyphenated NPs faster than sentences with ambiguous non-hyphenated NPs. Yes/No question accuracy distinguished reading of the sentences with ambiguous hyphenated phrases from those with ambiguous non-hyphenated phrases for older, but not for younger adults. Regression analyses showed that age contributed to both accuracy and reading times on this task, whereas WM did not.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Baddeley, A. (2003). Working memory and language: An overview. Journal of Communication Disorders, 36, 189–208.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boland, J. E. (2004). Linking eye movements to sentence comprehension in reading and listening. In M. Carreiras & C. Clifton Jr. (Eds.), The on-line study of sentence comprehension: Eyetracking, ERPs and beyond (pp. 51–76). New York, NY: Psychology Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Borella, E., Ghisletta, P., & de Ribaupierre, A. (2011). Age differences in text processing: The role of working memory, inhibition, and processing speed. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 66, 311–320.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Caplan, D., DeDe, G., Waters, G., Michaud, J., & Tripodis, Y. (2011). Effects of age, speed of processing, and working memory on comprehension of sentences with relative clauses. Psychology and Aging, 26, 439–450.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carlson, M. C., Hasher, L., & Zacks, R. T. (1995). Aging, distraction, and the benefits of predictable location. Psychology and Aging, 10, 427–436.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chicago manual of style (15th ed). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press (2003).

  • Daneman, M., & Carpenter, P. A. (1980). Individual differences in working memory and reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 450–466.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Beni, R., Borella, E., & Carretti, B. (2007). Reading comprehension in aging: The role of working memory and metacomprehension. Aging Neuropsychology and Cognition, 14, 189–212.

    Google Scholar 

  • DeDe, G., Caplan, D., Kemtes, K., & Waters, G. (2004). The relationship between age, verbal working memory, and language comprehension. Psychology and Aging, 19, 601–616.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frazier, L., & Rayner, K. (1987). Resolution of syntactic category ambiguities: Eye movements in parsing lexically ambiguous sentences. Journal of Memory and Language, 26, 505–526.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gathercole, S. E., & Baddeley, A. D. (1993). Working memory and language. Hove, Sussex: Lawrence Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gausman Benson, J., & Forman, W. (2002). Comprehension of written health care information in an affluent geriatric retirement community: Use of the test of functional health literacy. Gerontology, 49, 93–97.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grossman, M., Cooke, A., DeVita, C., Alsop, D., Detre, J., Chen, W., et al. (2002). Age-related changes in working memory during sentence comprehension: An fMRI study. NeuroImage, 15, 302–317.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harrington, M., & Sawyer, M. (1992). L2 working memory capacity and L2 reading skill. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 14, 25–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hasher, L., Lustig, C., & Zacks, R. T. (2007). Inhibitory mechanisms and the control of attention. In A. R. A. Conway, C. Jarrold, M. J. Kane, A. Miyake, & J. N. Towes (Eds.), Variation in working memory (pp. 227–249). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

  • Just, M. A., & Carpenter, P. A. (1992). A capacity theory of comprehension: Individual differences in working memory. Psychological Review, 99, 122–149.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kemper, S., Crow, A., & Kemtes, K. (2004). Eye-fixation patterns of high- and low-span young and older adults: down the garden path and back again. Psychology and Aging, 19, 157–170.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kemper, S., & Herman, R. E. (2006). Age differences in memory-load interference effects in syntactic processing. Journal of Gerontology, B, 61, 327–332.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kemper, S., Jackson, J. D., Cheung, H., & Anagnopoulos, C. A. (1993). Enhancing older adults’ reading comprehension. Discourse processes, 16, 405–428.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kemper, S., & McDowd, J. (2006). Eye movements of young and older adults while reading with distraction. Psychology and Aging, 21, 32–39.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kemper, S., McDowd, J., Metcalf, K., & Liu, C. (2008). Young and old adults’ reading of distractors. Educational Gerontology, 34, 489–502.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kemtes, K. A., & Kemper, S. (1997). Younger and older adults’ on-line processing of syntactically ambiguous sentences. Psychology and Aging, 12, 362–371.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • King, J., & Just, M. A. (1991). Individual differences in syntactic processing: The role of working memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 580–602.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liu, C., Kemper, S., & Bovaird, J. A. (2009). Comprehension of health-related written materials by older adults. Educational Gerontology, 35, 653–668.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacDonald, M. C., Just, M. A., & Carpenter, P. A. (1992). Working memory constraints on the processing of syntactic ambiguity. Cognitive Psychology, 24, 56–98.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miyake, A., Just, M., & Carpenter, P. (1994). Working memory constraints on the resolution of lexical ambiguity: Maintaining multiple interpretations in neural contexts. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 175–202.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mohamed, M., & Clifton, C., Jr. (2011). Processing temporary syntactic ambiguity: The effect of contextual bias. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64, 1797–1820.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newsome, M. R., & Glucksberg, S. (2002). Older adults filter irrelevant information during metaphor comprehension. Experimental Aging and Research, 28, 253–267.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norman, S., Kemper, S., & Kynette, D. (1992). Adults’ reading comprehension: Effect of syntactic complexity and working memory. Journal of Gerontology, 47, 258–265.

    Google Scholar 

  • Park, D. C. (2000). The basic mechanisms accounting for age-related decline in cognitive function. In D. Park & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Cognitive aging: A primer (pp. 1–20). Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pickering, M. J., Traxler, M. J., & Crocker, M. W. (2000). Ambiguity resolution in sentence processing: Evidence against frequency-based accounts. Journal of Memory and Language, 43, 447–475.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rumelhart, D. E. (1984). Understanding understanding. In J. Flood (Ed.), Understanding reading comprehension (pp. 1–20). Newark, NJ: International Reading Association.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salthouse, T. A. (1996). The processing-speed theory of adult age differences in cognition. Psychological Review, 103, 403–428.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schneider, W., Eschman, A., & Zuccolutto, A. (2002). E-Prime reference guide. Pittsburgh, PA: Psychology Software Tools, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stine, E. A. (1990). On-line processing of written text by younger and older adults. Psychology and Aging, 5, 68–78.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stine-Morrow, E. A., Ryan, S., & Leonard, J. S. (2000). Age differences in on-line syntactic processing. Experimental Aging Research, 26, 315–322.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vos, S., Gunter, T., Kolk, H. H. J., & Mulder, G. (2001). Working memory constraints on syntactic processing: An electrophysiological investigation. Psychophysiology, 38, 41–63.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Waters, G., & Caplan, D. (2005). The relationship between age, processing speed, working memory capacity, and language comprehension. Memory, 13, 403–413.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zacks, R. T., Hasher, L., & Li, K. Z. (2000). Human memory. In F. I. M. Craik & T. A. Salthouse (Eds.), The handbook of aging and cognition (pp. 293–359). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Associates.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

We thank Arild Hestvik, Nathan Maxfield, Gary Chant, and Hia Datta for their contributions to this project. We also thank all our participants. We are indebted to two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication Disorders, SUNY New Paltz, 75 Manheim Blvd., New Paltz, NY, 12561, USA

    Inge Anema

  2. CUNY Graduate Center, New York City, NY, USA

    Loraine K. Obler

  3. Language in the Aging Brain Laboratory, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA

    Loraine K. Obler

Authors
  1. Inge Anema
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Loraine K. Obler
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Inge Anema.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Anema, I., Obler, L.K. Hyphens for disambiguating phrases: effectiveness for young and older adults. Read Writ 25, 2091–2106 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-011-9345-4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-011-9345-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation