The Effect Of Inhibitory Function Training On The Comprehension Of Ambiguous Sentences In The Elderl

Executive function plays an important role in language cognitive activities.With the physiological aging of individuals,brain function,especially cognitive executive function,gradually declines.Previous studies have found that the disambiguation of garden path sentences is related to the executive control subfunction-inhibition function.According to the garden path model,in the process of understanding ambiguous sentences,it is necessary to suppress the initial representation and choose the correct representation,so the participation of inhibition ability is needed.In order to further explore the relationship between executive function aging and language cognitive activities,Experiment 1 takes the ambiguous structure "V+N1+ De +N2" as experimental material,and takes the elderly as subjects,and uses eye movement technique to examine the effect of inhibiting functional aging on the processing of Chinese ambiguous sentences.In the second experiment,the elderly with low inhibition ability were trained in inhibition function,and the long-distance transfer effect of executive function training on the sentence comprehension ability of the elderly was further explored.Experiment 1 adopted a mixed experimental design of 2(inhibition ability: high inhibition,low inhibition)×2(ambiguity: ambiguity,no ambiguity)× 3(ambiguity structure: verb-object structure,centering structure and balanced structure)× 2(context: centering context,verb-object context and balanced context),with the purpose of exploring the influence of inhibition function aging on the processing of ambiguous sentences of the elderly.The subjects first completed the color word Stroop task and the spatial Stroop task.According to the color word Stroop effect,the subjects were divided into high inhibition group and low inhibition group.Then,eye tracking technology is used to understand sentences,and the processing ability of ambiguous sentences of the elderly is examined.It is found that the inhibition ability of item analysis has a significant main effect on the correct rate of sentence comprehension,and the correct rate of subjects with high inhibition is higher.On the eye movement data,the inhibition ability of item analysis had a significant main effect.The total gaze time,the first reading time and the retrospection time of subjects with high inhibition are longer than those with low inhibition,and the retrospection times are less than those of subjects with low inhibition.There are also differences in inhibition ability in the eye movement indicators in conflict context.In the context of verb-object structure continuing to definite,the effect of total gaze time in disambiguation area is significant,and the total gaze time of subjects with high inhibition is shorter.The subjects with high inhibition always have a longer gaze time in N2 position of conflict context.It shows that inhibition ability is an important factor affecting the comprehension ability of ambiguous sentences of the elderly.Experiment 2 adopted the pre-test and post-test design of training group and control group,and the pre-test data is the data of experiment 1.The purpose was to examine whether inhibition training can help to improve the processing ability of ambiguous sentences in the elderly.The subjects in low inhibition group were randomly divided into experimental group and control group.The experimental group participated in inhibition training,while the control group was no treatment group.The training period is 14 days,once a day,and each training lasts at least 30 minutes.The content of inhibition function training includes Go-Nogo task,Local-Global task and N-back task(1-back task,2-back task and 3-back task).After the training,the two groups of subjects received a post-test of sentence comprehension ability.The experimental procedure was the same as that of Experiment 1,and the experimental materials were the same as those of Experiment 1.There is no difference between the pre-test data of control group and inhibition group by independent sample t-test,and then the post-test data by independent sample t-test.It is found that there are significant differences in the total fixation time,the number of retrospection times and the retrospection time of N2 position of sentences in conflict context,and there are differences in the disambiguation area of context ambiguous sentences in verb-object structure definition.After that,the paired sample T test was conducted on the pre-test and post-test of the training group and the control group respectively,and it was found that there was no difference between the pre-test and post-test of the control group,but there was a difference in the disambiguation area between the pre-test and post-test of the training group.However,the trained subjects had longer gaze time and more regression times.It shows that inhibition training affects the overall strategy of ambiguous sentence processing of the elderly,and has a far-distance transfer effect on the sentence understanding of the elderly.The results of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 show that:(1)Inhibition of functional decline is an important factor affecting the processing of ambiguous sentences in the elderly.(2)Inhibition training affects the processing ability of ambiguous sentences of the elderly,and has a far-distance transfer effect on sentence comprehension of the elderly.