The proposed investigation employs eye movement technology to study age differences in reading. Increased knowledge about age differences in reading and reading comprehension will be critical for improving older adults' understanding of important and often complex materials such as written medical information and instructions, treatment plans, informed consent forms, insurance forms, and other similar materials. Eye movement technology has proven to be important for studying group and individual differences in reading processes because eye movements are especially sensitive to cognitive factors affecting reading. We propose to use variations on the reading with distraction paradigm (Connelly, Hasher, & Zacks, 1991) to compare young and older adults' pattern of eye movements while reading texts with interposed distracting words and phrases. Although not a typical reading task, this method is useful as a way to test how reading and comprehension are affected by factors influencing the allocation of attention. Older adults typically read texts more slowly than young adults and have poorer comprehension of what they have read. In an effort to explain these differences, we combine the predictions of the inhibitory deficit theory (Hasher & Zacks, 1988), encoding deficit theory (Craik & Byrd, 1985), and Craik's (e.g., 1986) notions of environmental support. Six experiments are proposed to test inhibition and encoding accounts of age differences in reading and reading comprehension. We vary distracter salience, distracter length (number of words), semantic relation of distracter to target passage, distracter meaningfulness, and predictability of distracter location, in both sentence and text passages. Findings from these studies will permit a more complete account of age differences and a refinement of the inhibitory deficit hypothesis, and lead to a greater understanding of the processes underlying age differences in reading.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
1R01AG018892-01A2
Application #
6547986
Study Section
Biobehavioral and Behavioral Processes 3 (BBBP)
Program Officer
Elias, Jeffrey W
Project Start
2002-09-30
Project End
2006-08-31
Budget Start
2002-09-30
Budget End
2003-08-31
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
2002
Total Cost
$175,575
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Kansas
Department
Other Health Professions
Type
Schools of Allied Health Profes
DUNS #
016060860
City
Kansas City
State
KS
Country
United States
Zip Code
66160
Kemper, Susan; Bontempo, Daniel; Schmalzried, RaLynn et al. (2014) Tracking reading: dual task costs of oral reading for young versus older adults. J Psycholinguist Res 43:59-80
Rozek, Ellen; Kemper, Susan; McDowd, Joan (2012) Learning to ignore distracters. Psychol Aging 27:61-6
Liu, Chiung-Ju; Kemper, Susan; Bovaird, James A (2009) Comprehension of Health-related Written Materials by Older Adults. Educ Gerontol 35:653-668
Kemper, Susan; McDowd, Joan; Metcalf, Kim et al. (2008) Young and Older Adults'Reading of Distracters. Educ Gerontol 34:489-502
Kemper, Susan; McDowd, Joan; Kramer, Art (2006) Eye movements of young and older adults while reading with distraction. Psychol Aging 21:32-9
Kemper, Susan; Herman, Ruth E (2006) Age differences in memory-load interference effects in syntactic processing. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci 61:P327-32