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Age increases vulnerability to agreement errors: An eye-tracking study in Spanish
Poster Session D, Saturday, October 26, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm, Great Hall 3 and 4
Victoria Cano Sánchez1, Itziar Laka1, Jana Reifegerste2, Mikel Santesteban1; 1University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), 2Georgetown University
Language processing in aging is understudied, even so more regarding grammar. Here we investigate agreement, a relatively delicate and cognitively fragile syntactic dependency (Garaffa, 2009). We report that older adults (OAs) are more vulnerable to agreement errors and illusions than younger adults (YAs). Few studies on agreement processing in aging have shown that OAs take longer to process ungrammatical sentences and make more agreement attraction errors (e.g., *The key to the cabinets were rusty) than YAs (Cano-Sánchez et al., 2021; Reifegerste et al., 2017; Reifegerste et al., 2020). We conducted an agreement attraction eye-tracking experiment in Spanish to assess the reliability of these aging effects. We recorded the eye-movement patterns of 44 younger (18-34 years; M=28.5, SD= 7.7) and 48 older (60-80 years; M=64.0 SD= 5.6) healthy native Spanish speakers, during a sentence-reading task. We created 60 experimental sentences in four experimental conditions (e.g., Los pasteles con los dibujos nunca ganaron […] “The cakesMASC.PL.with the designsMASC.PL.never wonVº PL. […]”) by manipulating whether the head of the subject noun phrase agrees (pl.) or disagrees (sg.) in number with the plural verb (Grammaticality: gramm./ungramm.), and whether attractor nouns agree (pl.) or disagree (sing.) with the verb (Attractor: sg./pl.). Given previous evidence, we expected OAs to show larger grammaticality effects (prediction 1) and commit more grammatical (e.g., erroneously accepting El pastel con los dibujos nunca *ganaron […] “*The cakeMASC.SINGwith the designsMASC.PL.never wonVº PL.[…]”as correct) attraction errors (prediction 2). (G)LME analyses at the verb region revealed main effects of group, grammaticality and attractor showing larger fixations and more regressions for OAs compared to YAs, in ungrammatical than grammatical sentences, and in singular compared to plural attractors. An age group (younger/older) by grammaticality interaction was found in Regression Path Duration, with larger grammaticality effects for OAs than YAs. Additionally, in Total Time Duration attraction effects were significant only in ungrammatical sentences (shorter duration in sentences with plural than with singular attractors), revealing a grammatical asymmetry of attraction effects (Wagers et al., 2009). This grammaticality illusion created by plural attractors in ungrammatical sentences was also observed in Regressions-In at the subject region. Importantly, this grammaticality asymmetry of attraction effects was found only for OAs, as revealed by a three-way interaction found at Total Time Duration at the verb region. YAs, in contrast, did not show any attraction effects in either grammatical or ungrammatical sentences. Our findings suggest that in ungrammatical sentences, OAs fixate more on the verb and show more regressions between the head of the subject NP and the verb region than YAs, indicating that OAs have greater difficulty to resolve ungrammaticality (larger grammaticality effects than YA: confirming prediction 1). In addition, in ungrammatical sentences with singular subjects and plural attractors, OAs are more likely to be misled into a grammatical illusion (attraction effects for OAs but not for YAs: confirming prediction 2). In conclusion, aging affects efficiency in agreement processing. We will discuss potential roles of age-related declines in inhibitory control and working memory.
Topic Areas: Morphology, Reading