Abstract
Attributes associated with concept representations, such as familiarity, typicality, and age of acquisition, have been shown to be important influences on lexical-semantic processing. In most previous studies of healthy and pathological aging, these attributes are not equated for younger and older adults separately on the stimuli used. In this study, normative data were collected to test whether there exist any age differences in these attributes. The results demonstrate that the ratings given by younger and older adults on natural and manmade category items correlated positively. However, age differences were also apparent, whereby older adults provided higher ratings overall than younger adults. Suggestions and hypotheses are presented to explain this pattern of age differences, which relate to how category concepts may be represented by healthy younger and older adults. Also, the possible implications for these differential age ratings on lexical-semantic processing are discussed. The age differences apparent in this study demonstrate the need to consider age-appropriate normative ratings in the selection of stimuli for use in lexical-semantic processing studies of aging, and the normative data presented provide a means of equating category stimuli. The complete list of all the means is available at www.psychonomic.org/archive.
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The authors are grateful to A. Mike Burton, Anthony J. Sanford, Simon C. Garrod, and Linda M. Moxey for helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript; to Sheena MacDonald for her assistance with data entry; and to the participants. The authors are also extremely grateful to Philip A. Allen and an anonymous reviewer for invaluable suggestions. This study was supported by a Psychology Benefactor Scholarship awarded to the first author by the Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow.
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Morrow, L.I., Duffy, M.F. The representation of ontological category concepts as affected by healthy aging: Normative data and theoretical implications. Behavior Research Methods 37, 608–625 (2005). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03192731
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03192731