Lexico-semantic access and audiovisual integration in the aging brain: Insights from mixed-effects regression analyses of event-related potentials
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Date
2022Author
López Zunini, Rocío A.
Baart, Martijn
Samuel, Arthur G.
Armstrong, Blair C.
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Rocío A. López Zunini, Martijn Baart, Arthur G. Samuel, Blair C. Armstrong, Lexico-semantic access and audiovisual integration in the aging brain: Insights from mixed-effects regression analyses of event-related potentials, Neuropsychologia, Volume 165, 2022, 108107, ISSN 0028-3932, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.108107.
Neuropsychologia
Neuropsychologia
Abstract
We investigated how aging modulates lexico-semantic processes in the visual (seeing written items), auditory
(hearing spoken items) and audiovisual (seeing written items while hearing congruent spoken items) modalities.
Participants were young and older adults who performed a delayed lexical decision task (LDT) presented in
blocks of visual, auditory, and audiovisual stimuli. Event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed differences between
young and older adults despite older adults’ ability to identify words and pseudowords as accurately as young
adults. The observed differences included more focalized lexico-semantic access in the N400 time window in
older relative to young adults, stronger re-instantiation and/or more widespread activity of the lexicality effect at
the time of responding, and stronger multimodal integration for older relative to young adults. Our results offer
new insights into how functional neural differences in older adults can result in efficient access to lexico-semantic
representations across the lifespan.