Title

Aging and the optimal viewing position effect in visual word recognition: Evidence from English

Source of Publication

Psychology and Aging

Abstract

© 2017 The Author(s). Words are recognized most efficiently by young adults when fixated at an optimal viewing position (OVP), which for English is between a word's beginning and middle letters. How this OVP effect changes with age is unknown but may differ for older adults due to visual declines in later life. Accordingly, a lexical decision experiment was conducted in which short (5-letter) and long (9-letter) words were fixated at various letter positions. The older adults produced slower responses. But, crucially, effects of fixation location for each word-length did not differ substantially across age groups, indicating that OVP effects are preserved in older age.

Document Type

Article

First Page

367

Last Page

376

Publication Date

6-1-2017

DOI

10.1037/pag0000163

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