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Biomedical subjects

E A Stine

Publications and source records attributed to E A Stine.

11 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

Rapid speech processing and divided attention: processing rate versus processing resources as an explanation of age effects.

The authors conducted a dual-task study to examine age differences in speech processing under varying loads. Younger and older adults listened to and immediately recalled spoken passages presented at various speech rates (140-280 words per min). This task was performed alone as well as in a divided-attention condition in which subjects concurrently performed a picture recognition task. Consistent with the slowing hypothesis, older adults' immediate memory performance was differentially depressed when speech rates were very fast. The Age x Speech Rate interaction, however, was not exacerbated in the divided-attention condition. This suggests that aging may reduce the rate at which the processing operations underlying memory for speech are completed, but this is conceptually distinct from an age-related reduction in attentional capacity.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Adult age differences in the use of prosody for syntactic parsing and recall of spoken sentences.

In this experiment, young and elderly adults listened to and recalled sentences that were varied in speech rate through computer-controlled time compression. Half of the sentences at each speech rate were presented with a normal prosodic pattern that reinforced the lexically defined syntactic structure of the sentences, and half were presented with a prosodic contour that conflicted with that structure. Both young and elderly subjects showed better recall for slower speech rates and when prosody was consistent with syntactic structure, but these effects were larger for elderly subjects. When syntax and prosody were placed in conflict, elderly subjects were more likely than the young to reconstruct the lexical content of the presented sentences to produce responses with a syntactic structure consistent with the prosody marking. Although elderly adults may be disadvantaged by rapid speech input rates, we show that they rely on normal prosody to aid syntactic parsing as a step toward language comprehension.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1991

Speech-processing capacity in young and older adults: a dual-task study.

Adult age differences in processing speech were examined with a dual-task paradigm. Subjects listened to spoken passages for later recall while performing a concurrent reaction time task intended to index cognitive capacity usage on the speech memory task. Age differences in secondary task decision latencies were eliminated when subgroups of young and older subjects were matched on working memory span. These findings are interpreted as showing that an age-related reduction in working memory efficiency contributes to age differences in processing discourse for memory.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Word onset gating and linguistic context in spoken word recognition by young and elderly adults.

Young and elderly adults heard recorded words that increased in word-onset duration ("gated" words). Without context, both age groups could recognize spoken words after hearing only 50% to 60% of word onset information. When these words were embedded in sentence contexts, subjects required only 20% to 30% of word onset for recognition. An analysis of pre-recognition responses was used to examine use of linguistic context by both age groups to produce correct word recognition in the absence of a complete, or completely processed, acoustic input.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

On-line processing of written text by younger and older adults.

Word-by-word reading times were measured for young and elderly adults who read single sentences for immediate recall. The reading strategies of young and old were similar in that both groups allocated time to process word-level and constituent-level features. Young and elderly readers differed mainly in how they allocated time for organizational processing: Whereas younger adults allocated extra processing time at sentence boundaries as well as at major and minor clause boundaries, older adults allocated extra time at major and minor clause boundaries only. Results were generally consistent with the notions that processes that are more microlevel (e.g., word access) become automatic with practice and that age deficits are minimal for such processes. Age differences in organization time allocated at clause boundaries, however, suggested age-related limitations in working memory processing.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

Age differences in processing information from television news: the effects of bisensory augmentation.

Younger and older adults listened to segments of television news under one of three conditions: (a) Listen, in which they heard the auditory portion of the segment without its visual track; (b) Listen + Read, in which they listened to the auditory track only while reading along with a written transcript; and (c) Listen + Television, in which they heard the original televised segment complete with audio and visual track. Younger adults showed better free recall for the spoken information when it was augmented by the written transcript or video track; older adults did not show this benefit of bisensory augmentation. Subjects were also tested on a Daneman and Carpenter (1980) style measure of working memory processing. This measure accounted for virtually all age variance in memory performance in the unaugmented Listen condition. In the Listen + TV condition, however, there was a substantial proportion of age variance in performance which could not be accounted for in terms of working memory processing. Results are discussed in terms of the varying involvement of working memory processing in age differences as a function of input modality.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1989

Age and decision strategies in running memory for speech: effects of prosody and linguistic structure.

Young and elderly adults heard recorded passages of English prose spoken with and without normal prosody, and passages that were devoid of either linguistic or prosodic structure. Subjects were instructed to interrupt the speech input at points of their choosing for immediate recall on a segment-by-segment basis. For both age groups segmentation strategies varied with type of speech materials as did their levels of recall accuracy. Age differences in recall performance were diminished by the presence of normal prosody, an effect only partially attributable to the use of prosody to detect linguistic boundaries at the surface level.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1988

Memorability functions as an indicator of qualitative age differences in text recall.

An analysis in which the probability of text unit recall for older adults [p(Re/O)] is plotted as a function of this probability for the young [p(Re/Y)] is considered as one way to assess whether there are qualitative differences in text recall for young and old. The application of this relative memorability analysis to previously reported data dealing with the immediate recall of spoken sentences (Stine, Wingfield, & Poon, 1986) revealed that although older adults show qualitative recall similar to younger adults when informational density is low, they show less discrimination among text elements when informational density is increased.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Levels upon levels: predicting age differences in text recall.

Younger and older adults read and recalled narrative and expository prose passages of varying propositional density. Age differences in recall were smaller when text units were from higher levels in a coherence graph and when the young and elderly groups compared were higher in verbal ability. The extent to which age differences were moderated by these factors varied, however, as a function of text characteristics. These results reinforce the position that the extent of age differences in text recall depends on both text and reader characteristics.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Does the capacity of working memory change with age?

Young and elderly adults were compared for recall performance on simple digit and word spans (traditional tests of primary memory), versus a "loaded" auditory word span test designed to emphasize working memory capacity. Although digit spans were identical for the two age groups, there were small but significant age differences in word span, and even larger differences in working memory performance. An analysis of correlations between span measures and verbal ability scores supported the position that working memory loading represents a special problem for the elderly.

Adolescent↗