IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v12y2015i11p14445-14460d58792.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Proofreading in Young and Older Adults: The Effect of Error Category and Comprehension Difficulty

Author

Listed:
  • Meredith A. Shafto

    (Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EB, UK)

Abstract

Proofreading text relies on stored knowledge, language processing, and attentional resources. Age differentially affects these constituent abilities: while older adults maintain word knowledge and most aspects of language comprehension, language production and attention capacity are impaired with age. Research with young adults demonstrates that proofreading is more attentionally-demanding for contextual errors which require integration across multiple words compared to noncontextual errors which occur within a single word. Proofreading is also more attentionally-demanding for text which is more difficult to comprehend compared to easier text. Older adults may therefore be impaired at aspects of proofreading which require production, contextual errors, or more difficult text. The current study tested these possibilities using a naturalistic proofreading task. Twenty-four young and 24 older adults proofread noncontextual (spelling) and contextual (grammar or meaning) errors in passages that were easier or more difficult to comprehend. Older adults were preserved at proofreading spelling errors, but were impaired relative to young adults when proofreading grammar or meaning errors, especially for difficult passages. Additionally, older adults were relatively spared at detecting errors compared to correcting spelling errors, in keeping with previous research. Age differences were not attributable to individual differences in vocabulary knowledge or self-reported spelling ability.

Suggested Citation

  • Meredith A. Shafto, 2015. "Proofreading in Young and Older Adults: The Effect of Error Category and Comprehension Difficulty," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-16, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:12:y:2015:i:11:p:14445-14460:d:58792
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/11/14445/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/11/14445/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gabriel A. Radvansky & Rose T. Zacks & Lynn Hasher, 2005. "Age and Inhibition: The Retrieval of Situation Models," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 60(5), pages 276-278.
    2. Susan Kemper & Ruth E. Herman & Chiung-Ju Liu, 2004. "Sentence Production by Young and Older Adults in Controlled Contexts," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 59(5), pages 220-224.
    3. Rowena Gomez, 2002. "Word Frequency Effects in Priming Performance in Young and Older Adults," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 57(3), pages 233-240.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gen-Yih Liao & Tzu-Ling Huang & Alan R. Dennis & Ching-I Teng, 2024. "The Influence of Media Capabilities on Knowledge Contribution in Online Communities," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 35(1), pages 165-183, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Teal S Eich & Beatriz M M Gonçalves & Derek E Nee & Qolamreza Razlighi & John Jonides & Yaakov Stern, 2018. "Inhibitory Selection Mechanisms in Clinically Healthy Older and Younger Adults," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 73(4), pages 612-621.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:12:y:2015:i:11:p:14445-14460:d:58792. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.