Inhibition or Adaptation? Disentangling Age-Related Cognitive Interference in Spoken Language Through the Garner Paradigm.
Purpose: This study investigated the interaction between age-related inhibitory deficits and lifelong language experience in spoken language processing. We explored whether age-related cognitive interference is solely due to a general inhibitory decline or if adaptations in cue weighting strategies...
| Publicado en: | Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research Vol. 69; no. 2; pp. 506 - 519 |
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| Autores principales: | , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
Feb2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=191547598&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 191547598 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 10924388 1SM jtl: Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research issn: 10924388 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Feb2026 vid: 69 iid: 2 pid: 42 pub: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association artinfo: ui: 191547598 10.1044/2025_JSLHR-25-00148 ppf: 506 ppct: 13 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 2.6MB tig: atl: Inhibition or Adaptation? Disentangling Age-Related Cognitive Interference in Spoken Language Through the Garner Paradigm. aug: au: Chen, Xuanda Zhu, Wenkai Zeng, Lei affil: Department of Linguistics, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada École de kinésiologie et des sciences de l'activité physique, Université de Montréal, Quebec, Canada School of Chinese Language and Literature, Nanjing Normal University, Jiangsu, China School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada su: China Language & languages Task performance Executive function Age distribution Psychological adaptation Attention Language acquisition Masking (Psychology) Prompts (Psychology) Research funding Cognitive testing Phonological awareness Descriptive statistics Physiological aspects of speech Psychology of movement Neuropsychological tests Speech perception Comparative studies Reaction time Data analysis software Acoustic stimulation Cognitive aging sug: subj: Language & languages Task performance Executive function Age distribution Psychological adaptation Attention Language acquisition China Masking (Psychology) Prompts (Psychology) Research funding Cognitive testing Phonological awareness Descriptive statistics Physiological aspects of speech Psychology of movement Neuropsychological tests Speech perception Comparative studies Reaction time Data analysis software Acoustic stimulation Cognitive aging ab: Purpose: This study investigated the interaction between age-related inhibitory deficits and lifelong language experience in spoken language processing. We explored whether age-related cognitive interference is solely due to a general inhibitory decline or if adaptations in cue weighting strategies based on lifelong sensory integration experience also play a role. Method: We used a cross-linguistic Garner paradigm, comparing younger and older native Mandarin speakers' performance in tone discrimination tasks using native Mandarin and nonnative Thai. Participants judged if two stimuli had the same tone while ignoring irrelevant segmental variations in control and orthogonal conditions for both languages. Error rates and response times (RTs) were analyzed using mixed-effects models. Results: Older adults showed slower RTs than younger adults in both tasks, whereas accuracy remained comparable. Garner interference, reflected in RTs, was no greater in Mandarin but significantly greater in Thai for older adults compared to younger adults. Error rate patterns showed smaller Garner interference and age differences in the Mandarin task than in the Thai task. Conclusions: The findings suggest that age-related cognitive changes in Garner interference are not solely attributable to general inhibitory deficits but reflect a complex interaction with experience-driven adaptations in cue integration. Lifelong language experience appears to mitigate interference in familiar contexts, highlighting the adaptive role of experience in cognitive aging. This study shifts the perspective from a uniform inhibitory decline view to a dynamic aging view that emphasizes experience reliance and adaptive control. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.30885359 pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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