Différences liées à  l'âge lors de la lecture de phrases : étude des processus d'activation et d'inhibition

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether a performance decrease related to normal aging can be accounted for by a decrease in activation and inhibition processes. An original categorical decision task was performed by young participants (mean: 21.46 years) and older participants (mean: 66.48 years). The task was to decide whether affirmative or negative sentences including a categorical component were correct or not. A self-space presentation was used in order to measure separate processing times for different parts of the sentence. The results showed a differential processing of the sentence components related to the participant age, which suggests a decrease in activation and inhibition processes with aging.