The effects of aging and perceived loneliness on lexical ambiguity resolution

Nannan Zhou; Chih-Mao Huang; Qing Cai; Ovid J L Tzeng; Hsu-Wen Huang

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.978616

The effects of aging and perceived loneliness on lexical ambiguity resolution

Front Psychol. 2022 Oct 20:13:978616. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.978616. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Nannan Zhou^{1

2}, Chih-Mao Huang^{3

4}, Qing Cai^{1

2}, Ovid J L Tzeng^{3

4

5

6

7

8}, Hsu-Wen Huang⁹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Brain and Education Innovation, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.
² Shanghai Center for Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Technology, Shanghai, China.
³ Department of Biological Science and Technology, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
⁴ Center for Intelligent Drug Systems and Smart Bio-Devices (IDS2B), National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
⁵ Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
⁶ College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan.
⁷ Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan.
⁸ Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.
⁹ Department of Linguistics and Translation, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.

Abstract

Language is central to the interactional nature of the social life within which it is situated. To react or respond in a particular situation, we must be able to recognize the social situation. Growing evidence has demonstrated the negative impact of perceived loneliness on late-life executive functions. Yet little is known about how social factors impact language processing for older people. The current study aims to fill this gap, first by assessing age-related changes in lexical processing during Chinese word reading, second, by examining whether older adults' individual differences, such as processing speed and verbal abilities, modulate meaning retrieval and, third, by investigating whether perceived loneliness can hinder word reading. The use of compound words in Chinese enables significant sublexical ambiguity, requiring varying executive load during word recognition: when a word's constituent characters carry multiple meanings, readers must consider the meaning contributions of both constituent characters and use top-down word information to determine the most accurate meaning of the ambiguous character, a process termed "sublexical ambiguity resolution." In this study, adults read real Chinese words (including both sublexically ambiguous and unambiguous words) and pseudowords, and they were asked to make lexical decisions. Older adults exhibited greater lexicality effects (i.e., real words were easier to be identified than pseudowords) and similar sublexical ambiguity effects compared with young adults. Among older participants, processing speed could account for their ability to differentiate between words and pseudowords. In contrast, the level of perceived loneliness modulated the efficacy of sublexical ambiguity resolution: the participants with higher perceived loneliness displayed a greater sublexical ambiguity disadvantage effect. These results indicate that perceived loneliness may affect the use of contextual information in meaning retrieval during reading. The findings provide an important link between social connections and language processing.

Keywords: Chinese compounds; aging; perceived loneliness; reading; sublexical ambiguity.