Younger and Older Adults' Use of Verb Aspect and World Knowledge in the Online Interpretation of Discourse

Abstract

Eye tracking was used to explore the role of grammatical aspect and world knowledge in establishing temporal relationships across sentences in discourse. Younger and older adult participants read short passages that included sentences such as Mrs. Adams was knitting/knitted a new sweater… She wore her new garment…. Readers had greater difficulty processing the second event (She wore...) if it followed the imperfective (was knitting) rather than the perfective (knitted) version of the earlier-mentioned event. This suggests that aspect information is encoded online and that the “in progress” interpretation of the imperfective impeded integration of the second event into the discourse model. However, world knowledge modulated the effect: When the first event was of short duration (e.g., writing a check), the influence of aspect was not evident in the early moments of processing. These effects were independent of age group, suggesting that the mechanisms involved in coordinating temporal information in discourse are stable across the adult lifespan.