• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.111-132
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• 2013

Previous research has shown that aging asymmetrically affects various functions in language. It is known that older adults show deficits in language production compared to young adults, while the performance in semantic processing is similar between older and young adults. The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon effectively reflects failure in retrieval of phonological knowledge. Older adults report TOTs more often than young adults and the cause of this phenomenon has been explained by two frameworks: the 'blocking hypothesis' and 'transmission deficit hypothesis'. This study examines the effect of aging on the retrival of phonological knowledge by inducing TOTs in the laboratory. Two variables were manipulated: age and word category. Participants were young and older adults, and stimuli was selected from 5 categories of words. After the participants read a definition about a target word, they reported three conditions: 'know', 'don't know', 'TOT'. The results were as follows: First, the older adults reported TOTs more often than the young adults. Second, TOTs occurred more in proper nouns such as names of persons and places. Third, in the category that TOTs occurred more often, there was a bigger age difference. Fourth, older adults reported fewer alternative words during TOT than young adults. Fifth, participants tended to report the partial information during TOT in characters. These results show the age-related difficulty in the retrieval of phonological knowledge in Korean. It is explained by the transmission deficit hypothesis and the characteristics of Korean orthography and phonology.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.119-125
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• 2014

Many studies have reported an age-related decline in the ability to spell words correctly. The aim of this study was to investigate the deterioration on retrieving orthographic knowledge in 64 normal elderly Korean persons. The subjects were 64 in total: they were composed of 22 persons in their 50s, 20 persons in their 60s, and 22 persons in their 70s or older. We instructed them to write from a dictation of 60 words stimuli (20 regular words, 20 irregular words, 20 nonwords). Older adults made more errors than younger adults, and the age-related decline in performance was greater for irregular than regular and nonwords. With respect to the error pattern in the irregular words, the subjects showed more phonological plausible errors than phonological implausible errors. The number of self-correction was high in nonwords. Based on the results, we found that aging differentially affects the retrieval of orthographic knowledge on regular, irregular and nonwords.