Open AccessAging and the optimal viewing position effect in visual word recognition: Evidence from English.
Author(s) -
Li Lin,
Sha Li,
Jingxin Wang,
Victoria A. McGowan,
Pingping Li,
Timothy R. Jordan,
Kevin B. Paterson
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
psychology and aging
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.468
H-Index - 151
eISSN - 1939-1498
pISSN - 0882-7974
DOI - 10.1037/pag0000163
Subject(s) - psychology , psycinfo , lexical access , word recognition , eye movement , fixation (population genetics) , young adult , word (group theory) , cognition , developmental psychology , linguistics , medline , demography , population , philosophy , reading (process) , neuroscience , sociology , political science , law
Words are recognized most efficiently by young adults when fixated at an optimal viewing position (OVP), which for English is between a word's beginning and middle letters. How this OVP effect changes with age is unknown but may differ for older adults due to visual declines in later life. Accordingly, a lexical decision experiment was conducted in which short (5-letter) and long (9-letter) words were fixated at various letter positions. The older adults produced slower responses. But, crucially, effects of fixation location for each word-length did not differ substantially across age groups, indicating that OVP effects are preserved in older age. (PsycINFO Database Record