Verbal Transformations in the Aged

Abstract

The susceptibility of aged persons to verbal transformations was studied in an experiment with ambiguous verbal stimuli (‘reversible words’). Twenty-five subjects, aged 64 to 86 years, participated in the experiment. The results indicate that the aged are somewhat less susceptible to verbal reversals than are young adults, but there seem to be no age differences in the type of illusory forms heard. These results differ from those of experiments with nonreversible words, which show a very low rate of transformation and a total absence of transformations into meaningless forms in the aged. It is hypothesized that the reversibility of repeated ambiguous patterns is a general phenomenon arising from satiation, whereas transformations of repeated unambiguous verbal stimuli, involving phonetic distortions, are based on specific speech-perception mechanisms that are absent in the aged.