%0 Journal Article
%T Age-related Decline in Case-Marker Processing and its Relation to Working Memory Capacity.
%A Sung JE
%J J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci
%V 72
%N 5
%D Sep 2017 1
%M 26773313
%F 4.942
%R 10.1093/geronb/gbv117
%X <B>UNASSIGNED: </B>Purposes of the current study were to investigate whether age-related decline emerged in a case-marker assignment task (CMAT) and to explore the relationship between working-memory (WM) capacity and case-marker processing.<BR><B>UNASSIGNED: </B>A total of 121 individuals participated in the study with 62 younger adults and 59 elderly adults. All were administered a CMAT that consisted of active and passive constructions with canonical and noncanonical word-order conditions. A composite measure of WM tasks served as an index of participants' WM capacity.<BR><B>UNASSIGNED: </B>The older group performed worse than the younger group, and the noncanonical word order elicited worse performance than the canonical condition. The older group demonstrated greater difficulty in case-marker processing under the canonical condition and passive construction. Regression results revealed that age, education, and sentence type were the best predictors to account for performance on the CMAT.<BR><B>UNASSIGNED: </B>The canonicity of word order and passive construction were critical factors related to decline in abilities in a case-marker assignment. The combination of age, education, and sentence type factors accounted for overall performance on case-marker processing. Results indicated the crucial necessity to find a cognitively and linguistically demanding condition that elicits aging effects most efficiently, considering language-specific syntactic features.