Age-Related Degree and Criteria Differences in Semantic Categorization

Verheyen, Steven; Droeshout, Elisabeth; Storms, Gerrit

doi:10.5334/joc.74

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 95 publications

(145 reference statements)

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“…Consequently, by comparing networks from semantic fluency across different time conditions, we will be able to assess the robustness of past findings with respect to semantic content and situations where older adults may catch-up or even outperform younger adults in semantic fluency when given the opportunity to search their potentially larger semantic stores. Also, past work suggests that younger and older adults differ across semantic categories 32 , so comparing the network structure of different categories further contributes to understanding the factors that drive such differences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural differences in the semantic networks of younger and older adults

Wulff

Hills

Mata

2022

Sci Rep

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Cognitive science invokes semantic networks to explain diverse phenomena, from memory retrieval to creativity. Research in these areas often assumes a single underlying semantic network that is shared across individuals. Yet, recent evidence suggests that content, size, and connectivity of semantic networks are experience-dependent, implying sizable individual and age-related differences. Here, we investigate individual and age differences in the semantic networks of younger and older adults by deriving semantic networks from both fluency and similarity rating tasks. Crucially, we use a megastudy approach to obtain thousands of similarity ratings per individual to allow us to capture the characteristics of individual semantic networks. We find that older adults possess lexical networks with smaller average degree and longer path lengths relative to those of younger adults, with older adults showing less interindividual agreement and thus more unique lexical representations relative to younger adults. Furthermore, this approach shows that individual and age differences are not evenly distributed but, rather, are related to weakly connected, peripheral parts of the networks. All in all, these results reveal the interindividual differences in both the content and the structure of semantic networks that may accumulate across the life span as a function of idiosyncratic experiences.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural differences in the semantic networks of younger and older adults

Wulff

Hills

Mata

2022

Sci Rep

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“…While these correlations allow one to predict one's threshold for tall ( heavy ) from one's height (weight), these predictions are far from perfect, indicating that factors other than the measurements of one's body influence the position of the threshold. In other work, we have identified age (Verheyen, Ameel & Storms, ; Verheyen, Droeshout & Storms, ) as a factor systematically affecting the position of one's categorization threshold. The correlation we established between bodily measurements and categorization cannot be attributed to age, however, as we took care to control for this factor.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…As a result, the vagueness of the predicates necessarily manifested itself in the extension of the predicates: any individual categorization differences pertain to the number of instances the predicates are applied to. This type of vagueness is sometimes referred to as extensional vagueness, gradual vagueness, or vagueness in degree (as opposed to intensional vagueness or vagueness in criteria; Alston, ; Burks, ; Devos, , ; Kennedy, ; Machina, ; Verheyen et al, ; Verheyen & Storms, , ). Devos (, ) defines vagueness in criteria as the indeterminacy with respect to (the combination of) the conditions for application of a term.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subjectivity in gradable adjectives: The case oftallandheavy

2018

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We present an investigation of the ways in which speakers' subjective perspectives are likely to affect the meaning of gradable adjectives like tall or heavy. We present the results of a study showing that people tend to use themselves as a yardstick when ascribing these adjectives to human figures of varied measurements: subjects' height and weight requirements for applying tall and heavy are found to be positively correlated with their personal measurements. We draw more general lessons regarding the definition of subjectivity and the ways in which a standard of comparison and a significant deviation from that standard are specified.

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“…Although exemplar frequency correlations were moderate to high across norms, perhaps reflecting limited influence of age, cohort, and historical effects, our results on rank order correlations indicated significant variability across norms, which points to a critical limitation of the current method in calculating exemplar typicality. That is, although an exemplar may reside in one's semantic memory (and be accessible to the extent of production during the category fluency task), the importance of that exemplar to the category may change over time and with age (Brosseau & Cohen, 1996;Verheyen, Droeshout, & Storms, 2019). Our clustering results suggest that the ordering of exemplars may be more sensitive to capturing age, cohort, and historical effects.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Category norms with a cross-sectional sample of adults in the United States: Consideration of cohort, age, and historical effects on semantic categories

2020

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This paper describes normative data for newly collected exemplar responses to 70 semantic categories described in previous norming studies (Battig & Montague, 1969; Van Overschelde, Rawson, & Dunlosky, 2004; Yoon et al., 2004). These categories were presented to 246 Young (18-39 years), Middle (40-59 years), and Older (60 years and older) English-speaking adults living in the United States who were asked to generate as many category exemplars as possible for each of the 70 categories. In order to understand differences in normative responses, we analyzed these responses a) between age groups within the current sample and b) in comparison to three previously-published sets of norms. Experimental studies using such norms typically assume invariance of normative likelihoods across age and historical time. We replicate previous findings such that exemplar frequency correlations suggest moderate stability in generated category members between age groups and cohorts for many, but not all, categories. Further, analyses of rank order correlations highlight that the traditional measure of typicality may not capture all aspects of typicality, namely that for some categories there is high consistency in the frequency of exemplars across age groups and/or norms, but the ordering of those exemplars differs significantly. We include a cluster analysis to aid in grouping categories based on relative stability across time, cohort, and age groups. These results emphasize the importance of maintaining and updating age-differentiated category norms.

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Age-Related Degree and Criteria Differences in Semantic Categorization

Cited by 9 publications

References 95 publications

Structural differences in the semantic networks of younger and older adults

Structural differences in the semantic networks of younger and older adults

Subjectivity in gradable adjectives: The case oftallandheavy

Category norms with a cross-sectional sample of adults in the United States: Consideration of cohort, age, and historical effects on semantic categories

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