In this study, the authors investigated if age-related asymmetries predicted under Node Structure Theory existed between detecting and retrieving orthographic information. They begin their article by reviewing many of the studies already conducted on the effects of aging separately on the input and output of language, and argue that the effects found in these studies are asymmetric, and that this represents a fundamental challenge to theories of cognitive aging, which then needs to explain why some aspects of information processing are more vulnerable to the effects of aging that others.
To study these effects of aging, the authors used two groups of subjects: a young group aged from 17 to 23 years from introductory psychology classes, and an older group aged from 62 to 85 years who were part of the UCLA Cognition and Aging Lab pool. The tests consisted of presenting sets of words to both groups: Type 1 words were high-frequency occurrence words which were presented with correct spelling (e.g. elderly), un-repeated letter misspelling (e.g. elderly), and repeated letter (e.g. elderly) misspelling; Type 2 words were difficult to spell, appeared only in one correctly spelled or one incorrectly spelled version, never included letter repetition, and in length from five to 12 letters.
Participants were exposed to 45 Type 1 words interspersed among 55 Type 2 words. They then printed exactly what they had seen on a numbered sheet, misspelling words as they had seen them misspelled, and guessing at the spelling if necessary. The dependent measures were detection probability and retrieval probability. These results were analyzed statistically. Subsidiary results looked at rate and repetition detection and retrieval analysis as a function of rate and symmetric effects of repetition for task and age.
The authors begin their discussion with a long list of unlikely explanations to account for the asymmetry they found b
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