Adult Age Differences in Knowledge-Driven Reading.

Abstract

The authors investigated the effects of domain knowledge on online reading among younger and older adults. Individuals were randomly assigned to either a domain-relevant (i.e., high-knowledge) or domain-irrelevant (i.e., low-knowledge) training condition. Two days later, participants read target passages on a computer that drew on information presented in the high-knowledge training session. For both age groups, knowledge improved comprehension and recall and facilitated the processing of topic shifts during reading. In addition, domain knowledge had differential effects on processing across the 2 age groups. Among older (but not younger) readers, domain knowledge increased the time allocated to organization and integration processes (wrap-up) and increased the frequency of knowledge-based inferences during recall. These results suggest that among older readers, domain knowledge engenders an investment of processing resources during reading, which is used to create a more elaborated representation of the situation model.

Adult age differences in the effects of goals on self-regulated sentence processing.

“…However, these constraints must be contextualized in terms of a system that may be relatively more sensitive to socioemotional goals in learning (e.g., Adams et al, 2002), more attuned to situational features (e.g., Dijkstra, Yaxley, Madden, & Zwaan, 2004;Stine-Morrow, Morrow, & Leno, 2002;Stine-Morrow et al, 2004), and more adept at exploiting knowledge (Miller & Stine-Morrow, 1998;Miller, Cohen, & Wingfield, in press;Miller, Stine-Morrow, Kirkorian, & Conroy, 2004) and the higher-order structures of discourse (Stine-Morrow, Miller, Gagne, & Hertzog, submitted). Table 2 Hierarchical Regressions Predicting Recall Performance and Encoding Efficiency …”

Aging and situation model processing

“…To compensate for lower verbatim or textbase recall, older adults could rely more on existing schematic knowledge and expend more effort during the phase of conceptual organization and integration, in order to construct an elaborate and accurate situation model. For example, older adults who acquired relevant knowledge about a topic were more likely to make elaborative inferences during recall, relative to younger readers, although for both age groups utilization of this knowledge improved comprehension and recall (Miller, Stine-Morrow, Kirkorian, & Conroy, 2004). Alternatively, increased schema usage could reflect greater expertise on the part of older less total capacity is available to draw from, comprehension would be negatively affected.…”

“…Thus, older adults may be better able to abstract the moral of a story but, at the same time, have poorer memory for the story itself (Adams, 1991;Adams et al, 1997;Narvaez, Radvansky, & Lynchard, 2007). They also seem to utilize background knowledge to make elaborative inferences during recall of a text and respond better to inference-based comprehension questions, relative to younger adults (Miller et al, 2004). In other words, if older adults can tap into a knowledge base of a longer reading history and focus on applying this knowledge and conceptual integration while processing a text, this may pay off in the construction and updating of situation models that turn out to be similar to those of younger adults and possibly contain a larger inference structure than do those of younger adults.…”

“…Studies have demonstrated that schema utilization reduced age differences in memory for prose passages (Arbuckle et al, 1990), whereas background knowledge contributed to the frequency with which knowledge-based inferences were made by older readers (Miller et al, 2004). In other words, knowledge derived from schemas, other domains, or a lifetime of reading experiences may contribute to a greater efficiency with which processing resources are expended during the construction of mental representations of text and may help older adults to maintain levels of situation model processing similar to those of younger adults (Stine-Morrow et al, 2006).…”

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“…Nonetheless, this pattern of differences in wrap-up processes is not observed universally. For instance, in different studies, there have been no age differences in wrap-up times at clausal boundaries coupled with greater sentence boundary wrap-up effects for older adults (Smiler, Gagne, & Stine-Morrow, 2003) and larger wrap-up effects for older adults at both intrasentence and between sentence boundaries (Miller, Stine-Morrow, Kirkorian, & Conroy, 2004;). Interestingly, and consistent with the separate sentence interpretation resource hypothesis, resource allocation parameters for wrap-up apparently do not correlate with working memory as assessed by span measures (Smiler et al, 2003;Stine-Morrow, Milinder et al, 2001).…”