The Processing of Morphology in Old Age

Evidence From Hebrew

gkave{at}012.net.il

Purpose: Taking advantage of the rich morphological structure of Hebrew, the current article aims to examine whether age affects the processing of morphological forms through an investigation of 2 systematic morphological paradigms.

Method: Forty-eight young and 48 old Hebrew speakers completed 2 experiments: the 1st investigated sensitivity to subject-verb gender incongruity in a reading task, and the 2nd examined parsing of pseudoverbs containing existing and nonexisting consonantal roots in a lexical-decision task.

Results: Older adults were slower relative to the young, but both groups were slower on incongruent relative to congruent targets and on a pseudoverb with a real root relative to a pseudoverb with a nonexistent root. In both experiments the interaction between condition and age was statistically significant.

Conclusions: While older adults demonstrate preserved morphological parsing abilities, possible explanations for the interaction effect include cognitive slowing or deficient inhibitory control.

KEY WORDS: morphology, aging, Hebrew

Submitted on July 30, 2004
Revised on November 16, 2004
Accepted on April 8, 2005

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