Age-related changes in the processing of the metaphorical alternative meanings of words

The goal of this study was to contribute to a better understanding of the relative impacts of age and the occurrence of a right-hemisphere lesion on the processing of the non-literal alternative meanings of words. Eighty healthy individuals participated in this study. Participants were divided into two groups: the older group included participants between 50 and 65 years old whereas the younger group included participants between 20 and 30 years old. Participants performed a semantic pairing task involving metaphorical and non-metaphorical alternative meanings of words and a countdown task. There were two different task presentation conditions: (1) non-interfering context task in which participants completed the main task (word-triad task) without any interference, and (2) interfering-context task in which the word-triad task and the countdown task were executed simultaneously. The main results indicated an age-related change in the processing of the non-literal alternative meanings of words. The most interesting result was that the resource-limiting condition had an impact only on the young adult group.