Good-enough Language Processing in Reading in Younger and Older Adults: the Effect of Visual Noise

Previous studies have shown that when people process complex sentences they do not always conduct full and accurate analysis. Instead, they rely on 'good-enough' (GE) representations (Ferreira et al. 2002; Ferreira, Patson 2007). There is the hypothesis that older people rely on GE more than younger adults (Christianson et al. 2001, 2006). The present research aimed to test and confirm this hypothesis on the basis of Russian sentences with participle clauses of two types (with and without semantic plausibility) in two modalities (under the conditions of competition from visual background noise and without noise). The experiment was carried out using the method of self-paced reading task and answering the comprehension questions after reading each sentence. The results suggest that both younger and older adults equally rely on GE during the analysis of implausible sentences, paying no attention to the syntax of the sentence and thinking only about its semantics. A significant difference between two age groups was found only in sentence reading times and reaction times – the older age group was slower. It was also found that no age group has a statistically significant difference between the answer accuracy under the conditions of competition from visual noise in comparison with the conditions without noise, which means that analyzers can successfully inhibit visual noise as unnecessary information. Our analysis also included testing working memory span. We assumed that there would be a statistically significant relationship between age, working memory span and the reliance on GE. Our research has not revealed any connection between working memory span and other variables, and the main hypotheses have not been confirmed, which means that the further research in this area is needed.