Perception-production asymmetries in homophone spelling: the unique influence of aging.

OBJECTIVES: This research investigated three potential asymmetries in the production and perception of homophone spelling errors: aging, homophone dominance, and priming. A homophone spelling error occurs when a contextually appropriate word (beet) is replaced with its homophone (e.g., beat glaze). Two experiments investigated young and older adults' written production and detection of these errors. METHOD: Participants wrote sentences (Experiment 1) or detected errors in sentences (Experiment 2) containing a dominant homophone (beat) or subordinate homophone (beet). Homophones were preceded by a prime (neat) that shared orthography with the contextually inappropriate homophone (beat) or by an unrelated control word (fun). RESULTS: Results revealed an aging asymmetry in production and detection as a function of dominance. Older adults made more errors than young adults when producing dominant homophones but fewer errors in producing subordinate homophones. In contrast, older adults consistently made fewer errors than young adults when detecting homophone errors. Independent of aging, dominance had similar effects on production and detection, with more errors on subordinate homophones. Priming had asymmetric effects different from aging by increasing errors in production but not detection. DISCUSSION: These results suggest aging uniquely dissociates perception and production of homophone spelling and demonstrate circumstances under which aging benefits language processing.

Demographic and contextual factors related to knowledge about Alzheimer's disease.

Accurate knowledge about Alzheimer's disease (AD) is essential to address the public health impact of dementia. This study examined AD knowledge in 794 people who completed the Alzheimer's Disease Knowledge Scale and questions about their background and experience with AD. Whereas overall knowledge was fair, there was significant variability across groups. Knowledge was highest among professionals working in the dementia field, lower for dementia caregivers and older adults, and lowest for senior center staff and undergraduate students. Across groups, respondents knew the most about assessment, treatment, and management of AD and knew the least about risk factors and prevention. Greater knowledge was associated with working in the dementia field, having family members with AD, attending a related class or support group, and exposure to dementia-related information from multiple sources. Understanding where gaps in dementia knowledge exist can guide education initiatives to increase disease awareness and improve supportive services.

Why did I right that? Factors that influence the production of homophone substitution errors.

Despite considerable research on language production errors involving speech, little research exists in the complementary domain of writing. Two experiments investigated the production of homophone substitution errors, which occur when a contextually appropriate word (e.g., beech) is replaced with its homophone (e.g., beach tree). Participants wrote down auditorily presented sentences containing dominant or subordinate homophones. Homophones were preceded by a lexical prime that overlapped in phonology and orthography (e.g., teacher) or only orthography (e.g., headmaster) with the target homophone. Results showed more substitution errors when the context elicited a subordinate homophone than when it elicited a dominant homophone. Furthermore, both types of primes equivalently increased production of homophone errors relative to control words (e.g., lawyer), suggesting that only orthographic overlap between the prime and target was necessary to influence errors. These results are explained within dual-route models of spelling, which postulate an interaction between lexical and sublexical routes when spelling.