Stronger left-hemisphere lateralization in older versus younger adults while processing conventional metaphors.
Thirty younger (age 20-30) and 30 older (age 69-85) right-handed Hebrew speakers performed a semantic judgement task while processing literal word pairs and conventional metaphors, presented in the divided visual field paradigm. Older adults responded more accurately to conventional metaphors in the right visual field/left hemisphere versus the left visual field/right hemisphere, whereas younger adults showed no lateralization. Vocabulary scores cancelled group differences in lateralization. An additional lexical decision task replicated the main finding of left-hemisphere lateralization in older but not in younger participants. We suggest that accumulated knowledge increases left-hemisphere lateralization on tasks of language comprehension in older relative to younger adults.
['Kavé|Gitit|G|', 'Gavrieli|Ronit|R|', 'Mashal|Nira|N|']
D000328:Adult D000368:Aged D000369:Aged, 80 and over D000375:Aging D054022:Cerebrum D005260:Female D007839:Functional Laterality D006801:Humans D007600:Judgment D008297:Male D019365:Metaphor D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual D010775:Photic Stimulation D011930:Reaction Time D011932:Reading D012660:Semantics D055815:Young Adult
Ageing Divided visual field Language Hemispheric asymmetry