Adult age differences in visual word recognition

The aim of the present research was to investigate whether written word recognition performance varies as a function of age by mean of studying the word frequency effect in French. Three lexical decision experiments were performed by young (range = 18-31 years) and older adults (range = 60-83 years,). As a whole, the results showed a decrease of the word frequency effect with aging (Experiments 1, 2 and 3). The data specified that this change was not due to orthographic neighbourhood (Experiment 2), but depended on the congruency between objective and subjective word frequencies (Experiment 3). These findings are discussed in the framework of word recognition models and aging theories. They further highlight the importance of using frequency measures adapted to the populations in the field of aging research. (C) 2008 Elsevier Masson SAS. Tous droits reserves.