Multiple Solutions to the Same Problem: Utilization of Plausibility and Syntax in Sentence Comprehension by Older Adults with Impaired Hearing

Abstract

A fundamental question in psycholinguistic theory is whether equivalent success in sentence comprehension may come about by different underlying operations. Of special interest is whether adult aging, especially when accompanied by reduced hearing acuity, may shift the balance of reliance on formal syntax vs. plausibility in determining sentence meaning. In two experiments participants were asked to identify the thematic roles in grammatical sentences that contained either plausible or implausible semantic relations. Comprehension of sentence meanings was indexed by the ability to correctly name the agent or the recipient of an action represented in the sentence. In Experiment 1 young and older adults’ comprehension was tested for plausible and implausible sentences with the meaning expressed with either an active-declarative or a passive syntactic form. In Experiment 2 comprehension performance was examined for young adults with age-normal hearing, older adults with good hearing acuity, and age-matched older adults with mild-to-moderate hearing loss for plausible or implausible sentences with meaning expressed with either a subject-relative (SR) or an object-relative (OR) syntactic structure. Experiment 1 showed that the likelihood of interpreting a sentence according to its literal meaning was reduced when that meaning expressed an implausible relationship. Experiment 2 showed that this likelihood was further decreased for OR as compared to SR sentences, and especially so for older adults whose hearing impairment added to the perceptual challenge. Experiment 2 also showed that working memory capacity as measured with a letter-number sequencing task contributed to the likelihood that listeners would base their comprehension responses on the literal syntax even when this processing scheme yielded an implausible meaning. Taken together, the results of both experiments support the postulate that listeners may use more than a single uniform processing strategy for successful sentence comprehension, with the existence of these alternative solutions only revealed when literal syntax and plausibility do not coincide.

Variations Within Normal Hearing Acuity and Speech Comprehension: An Exploratory Study

“…The data for this analysis were taken from the abovecited three studies published between 2016 and 2018 (Study 1: Amichetti et al, 2016…”

“…In several past studies, we have asked these questions in the context of older adults with age-related mild-moderate hearing loss using sentences that differed in syntactic complexity (Amichetti, White, & Wingfield, 2016;Ayasse & Wingfield, 2018;DeCaro, Peelle, Grossman, & Wingfield, 2016). In all three of these experiments, however, we also had a comparison group of young adults with normal hearing acuity to serve as a reference against which to compare comprehension accuracy for older adults with hearing loss.…”

“…These three studies were selected because (a) they report audiometric screening for normal hearing for all participants, (b) sentences were presented at a specified normal speech rate, (c) confirmed testing for audibility was reported, and (d) all three studies (Amichetti et al, 2016;Ayasse & Wingfield, 2018;DeCaro et al, 2016) contrasted sentence types that differed in syntactic complexity. Together, these three studies yielded acuity and sentence comprehension data for 60 young adults with normal hearing for this exploratory analysis.…”

Individual Differences in Peripheral Hearing and Cognition Reveal Sentence Processing Differences in Healthy Older Adults

“…For the second paradigm, we chose a variant of a manipulation that is commonly used in the current Cognitive Hearing Science literature. Most of the studies investigating relationships between language comprehension, syntactical processing, and aging have compared subject- and object-relative clause comprehension (Wingfield et al, 2006 ; Amichetti et al, 2016 ; DeCaro et al, 2016 ). However, a considerable amount of evidence points to object-relative clauses not being more difficult to process than subject-relative clauses per se , but only when a certain animacy configuration is present, namely, when the subject of the main clause is animate and the subject of the object-relative clause is inanimate (Weckerly and Kutas, 1999 ; Traxler et al, 2002 ; DeDe, 2015 ).…”

“…To measure processing difficulties, previous studies employed methods of either response accuracy (comprehension questions; Wingfield et al, 2006 ; Amichetti et al, 2016 ; DeCaro et al, 2016 ), or reading/listening times (eye-tracking; Traxler et al, 2002 , and self-paced listening; DeDe, 2015 ). Because we aimed for auditory presentation of our stimuli (thereby excluding reading measures), and because the RRC paradigm allowed for probing sentential processing at multiple points in time (thereby excluding end-of-sentence behavioral comprehension measures), we chose event-related potentials (ERPs) as our online sentence processing markers of choice.…”