The representation of ontological category concepts as affected by healthy aging: Normative data and theoretical implications

Abstract

Attributes associated with concept representations, such as familiarity, typicality, and age of acquisition, have been shown to be important influences on lexical-semantic processing. In most previous studies of healthy and pathological aging, these attributes are not equated for younger and older adults separately on the stimuli used. In this study, normative data were collected to test whether there exist any age differences in these attributes. The results demonstrate that the ratings given by younger and older adults on natural and manmade category items correlated positively. However, age differences were also apparent, whereby older adults provided higher ratings overall than younger adults. Suggestions and hypotheses are presented to explain this pattern of age differences, which relate to how category concepts may be represented by healthy younger and older adults. Also, the possible implications for these differential age ratings on lexical-semantic processing are discussed. The age differences apparent in this study demonstrate the need to consider age-appropriate normative ratings in the selection of stimuli for use in lexical-semantic processing studies of aging, and the normative data presented provide a means of equating category stimuli. The complete list of all the means is available at www.psychonomic.org/archive.

Apples are not the only fruit: the effects of concept typicality on semantic representation in the anterior temporal lobe

“…To assess the impact of concept typicality upon naming performance in SD, the objects in the 48 or 64 item Cambridge Picture Naming Tests were subdivided into equal-N High and Low Typicality sets, based upon scores for these items in the Morrow and Duffy (2005) ontological concept typicality norms for a group of older adults on a scale from one (low typicality) to seven (high typicality). Typicality scores were not available for all items: for the 48-item version, there were 40 scores available, and for the 64-itemversion, there were 50 scores available.…”

“…Since the proposal of the very first cognitive models of semantic memory, it has been recognized that the typicality of an item is a key dimension of its semantic representation. Smith et al (1974) reported evidence of a concept typicality effect such that people are faster to verify that “An apple is a fruit” than “An avocado is a fruit.” Indeed, concept typicality ratings confirm that an apple is judged to be a more typical fruit than an avocado (Morrow and Duffy, 2005), given the latter's savory flavor and oily texture. Such findings motivated Collins and Loftus (1975) to incorporate spreading activation into their semantic network and indeed form the basis of the prototype theory of semantic representation proposed by Rosch and Mervis (1975).…”

A lifespan perspective on semantic processing of concrete concepts: does a sensory/motor model have the potential to bridge the gap?

“…Older adults' access to larger vocabularies and longer experience using these vocabularies has been proposed as one explanation for the observation that older adults' connected speech contains a larger proportion of low-frequency words than that of younger adults (Kavé et al, 2009). Older adults also systematically provide higher ratings for semantically based psycholinguistic factors, such as typicality and familiarity, of both living and nonliving concepts, as well as identifying fewer concepts as "unknown" (Morrow & Duffy, 2005). One likely explanation for this is what Morrow and Duffy termed the "expert theory of semantic representations" (see also Horton et al, 2010;Mayr & Kliegl, 2000).…”

BASETY: Extension et typicalité des exemplaires pour 21 catégories d'objets.

“…Les tables de normes catégorielles sont très développées en langue anglaise depuis la fin des années 1960 (Battig & Montague, 1969;Morrow & Duffy, 2005 (Cordier, 1980;Dubois, 1983;Marchal & Nicolas, 2003), peu de bases sont publiées et facilement accessibles. Avec BASETY, la recherche en séman-tique lexicale en langue française dispose de normes catégori-elles fiables incluant un indice de typicalité pour chaque item de cette base.…”

“…Dubois (1983) considère comme prototype (objet qui représente le mieux la catégorie) un exemplaire cité par plus de 75 % des participants, et ceci sans prendre en compte le rang de citation. Morrow et Duffy (2005) ont adopté une procédure qui consiste à demander aux participant(e)s d'é-valuer la typicalité d'un exemplaire d'une catégorie sur une échelle de Likert.…”