Imitation of complex grammatical constructions by elderly adults
Issue Date
1986Author
Kemper, Susan
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Elderly adults (70 to 89 years) and young adults (30 to 49 years) were asked to imitate complex
sentences involving embedded gerunds, w/z-clauses, r/ia/-clauses, and relative clauses. The young adults were able to imitate accurately or correctly paraphrase the sentences regardless of the length, position, or type of embedded clause. The elderly adults could accurately imitate or paraphrase short constructions. The elderly adults were unable to imitate or paraphrase correctly long constructions, especially those in which the embedded clause was sentence-initial. The pattern of results demonstrates an age-related decline in syntactic processing abilities due, perhaps, to the increased processing demands of the long or sentence-initial constructions.
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Citation
Kemper, S. (1986). Imitation of complex grammatical constructions by elderly adults. Applied Psycholinguistics, 7, 277-287. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0142716400007578
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