ERIC Number: EJ979465
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012-Oct
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0922-4777
EISSN: N/A
Hyphens for Disambiguating Phrases: Effectiveness for Young and Older Adults
Anema, Inge; Obler, Loraine K.
Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, v25 n9 p2091-2106 Oct 2012
The purpose of this study was to investigate whether hyphens that disambiguate phrasing in ambiguous sentences influence reading rate and reading comprehension for younger and older adults. Moreover, as working memory (WM) has been implicated in age-related changes in sentence comprehension for both auditory and written materials, we asked if it contributed to comprehension of our sentences with hyphenated and non-hyphenated ambiguous noun phrases (NPs), predicting that the hyphens would reduce WM load. Twenty younger (M = 24 years) and 20 older (M = 73 years) adults read sentences with either ambiguous or non-ambiguous NPs that were either hyphenated or not. Both reading times for the sentences and accuracy on Yes/No questions were measured. Results indicated that younger adults read sentences more rapidly than the older participants whether sentences were presented word-by-word or as complete sentences. Both younger and older adults read sentences with ambiguous hyphenated NPs faster than sentences with ambiguous non-hyphenated NPs. Yes/No question accuracy distinguished reading of the sentences with ambiguous hyphenated phrases from those with ambiguous non-hyphenated phrases for older, but not for younger adults. Regression analyses showed that age contributed to both accuracy and reading times on this task, whereas WM did not.
Descriptors: Young Adults, Older Adults, Punctuation, Phrase Structure, Reading Rate, Reading Comprehension, Short Term Memory, Nouns, Sentences, Accuracy, Ambiguity (Semantics), Age Differences, Regression (Statistics)
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A