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Abstract

Older adults have more language experience than young adults and may therefore rely more strongly on transitional probabilities between words for spoken word recognition. We investigated recognition of acoustically reduced words (such as “promised”) that were followed by a word with which it either formed a fixed expression (“promised land”) or not (“promised lamp”). Our research questions were (a) whether older adults show a greater following-word context effect on target word recognition than young adults; (b) whether low-pass filtering the stimuli would bring about a stronger reliance on following context in young adults; and (c) whether there are any interactions with the morphological complexity of the target word (e.g., “promised” versus “fat”), because complex and longer words can be more reduced. Data analysis (recognition accuracy and RTs) showed that words were better recognized when part of a fixed expression, and that older adults benefited more in RT than young adults (equal benefit in accuracy), but only for the morphologically complex target words. The young adults with simulated hearing loss, however, benefited less than the other two groups (both in accuracy and RT). These results suggest that signal degradation does not immediately lead to greater reliance on following-word context.