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Effects of Animacy on Chinese RCs Processing in Younger and Old Adults: Evidence from Eye-tracking
ZHANG Tian-yu, HE Run-ze, HE Wen-guang
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2025.04.006
School of Psychology, Qufu Normal University, 273165, Qufu, China School of Medical Information Engineering, Jining Medical University, 276800, Rizhao, China School of Psychology, Qufu Normal University, 273165, Qufu, China
Syntax and semantics are two important factors that influence sentence processing. Studies have found different aging effects in syntactic and semantic processing during sentence comprehension. While there is consensus on the aging effects in syntactic processing, the presence of aging in semantic processing remains debated. The present study aimed to explore whether there were aging effects in lexical-semantic information processing in complex sentence. 79 participants were recruited to take part in this study, including 40 younger adults (mean age of 21.1 ± 1.19 years) and 39 older adults (mean age of 66.24 ± 3.02 years). Using eye-movement tracking technology and manipulating the animacy of head nouns in Chinese subject relative clauses (SRCs) and object relative clauses (ORCs), we investigated the abilities of young and old adults in relative clauses (RCs) processing. The results of comprehension accuracy revealed a significant effect of aging in RCs processing, with older participants exhibiting poor performance compared with younger counterparts across all four clause conditions. Furthermore, younger participants demonstrated a clear animacy effect in RCs processing, but this effect was not found in older participants. Reading times indicated a prominent aging effect in clause processing, with older participants showing significantly longer reading times across all four types of RCs compared to younger participants. It was observed that processing ORCs in Chinese was relatively easier than processing SRCs. Additionally, a noticeable aging effect in semantic processing was found, specifically, the difficulties of processing SRCs and ORCs vary with the animacy configuration of the head nouns for younger participants but were not observed in older participants. In summary, aging in cognition would also inhinder semantic processing in complex sentence comprehension.
syntax, semantics, relative clauses, aging, eye-movement tracking
Journal of Literature and Art Studies, April 2025, Vol. 15, No. 4, 294-309
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