N. P. Vasavan Nair | McGill University | Douglas Mental Health University Institute
Eva Kehayia | McGill University | Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation of Greater Montreal (CRIR)
To explore how processing lexicality may change with aging and in the presence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), we
conducted two experiments investigating lexicality judgements using an on-line behavioural psycholinguistic methodology and
electrophysiological/event-related potential (ERP) methods; oddball lexical decision tasks. Results from these lexical decision
tasks showed that while those with AD show similar rates of accuracy for their lexical decision as compared older adults (OA),
they are particularly slowed when making judgements for pseudowords. Our results from the ERP tasks also showed that the two
groups behaved differently with regard to elicitation of the P3 ERP response, which indicates differences in how these two groups
form lexical categories. The pattern of ERP responses suggests that older adults are sensitive to the orthography/phonology of the
stimuli during the course of lexical processing as compared to participants with AD who show less sensitivity to
orthographic/phonological cues. Additionally, the ERP P3 amplitude results suggest further linguistically related differences
between healthy older adults and those with AD, and highlight the importance and usefulness of combining behavioural
psycholinguistic and ERP methodologies.
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Cited by (1)
Cited by 1 other publications
Rojas, Carlos, Marilyn San Martín, Paula Urzúa, Ernesto Guerra & Eleonora Rossi
2024. Word or pseudoword? The lexicality effect in naming and lexical decision tasks during advanced aging. PLOS ONE 19:2 ► pp. e0299266 ff.
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