Publication on aging and syntax processing

Here’s an interesting paper from Laurie and L+PLUS Lab Alum Willem van Boxtel looking at how processing complex syntax, like relative clauses, may or may not change as you age.

The best news from this paper is that some parts of language processing, like comprehension of syntactic structure, seem to be invariant as you age. In other words, not everything we measure in aging shows a pattern of decline. The wonderful complexity of English relative clauses is here to stay!

This paper was part of a special issue in Topics in Cognitive Science looking at aging more generally. If you’re interested in that topic, I’d suggest checking out the whole issue!