Effects of age, word frequency, and noise on the time course of spoken word recognition

This study assessed the effects of age, word frequency, and background noise on the time course of lexical activation during spoken word recognition. Participants (41 young adults and 39 older adults) performed a visual world word recognition task while we monitored their gaze position. On each trial, four phonologically unrelated pictures appeared on the screen. A target word was presented auditorily following a carrier phrase (“Click on "), at which point participants were instructed to use the mouse to click on the picture that corresponded to the target word. High- and low-frequency words were presented in quiet to half of the participants. The other half heard the words in a low level of noise in which the words were still readily identifiable. Results showed that, even in the absence of phonological competitors in the visual array, high-frequency words were fixated more quickly than low-frequency words by both listener groups. Young adults were generally faster to fixate on targets compared to older adults, but the pattern of interactions among noise, word frequency, and listener age showed that older adults’ lexical activation largely matches that of young adults in a modest amount of noise.