EFFECTS OF REDUCED CONTRAST ON YOUNG AND OLDER ADULTS'UTILIZATION OF CONTEXT DURING READING

摘要

People frequently read in sub-optimal conditions (Charness & Dij kstra, 1999). When textis difficult to perceive, readers can rely on sentential context as a compensatory strategy.Specifically, readers can develop expectations about which words will occur in a textbased on the context in which words occur. The purpose of this study was to examineage differences in the use of contextual utilization, by comparing words that were highlypredictable from their sentence context to words that were less predictable from theirsentence context. Text was presented in three different levels of text/background contrast(high, medium, low) to explore the effects of contrast reduction. Eye tracking was usedto measure fixation times to target words. Readers, particularly older adults, fixated lowpredictabilitywords longer than high-predictability words. Contrast reduction did notsignificantly influence reading times for either group, suggesting that readers are tolerantof some forms of stimulus quality degradation.