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Abstract

Reading is a daily activity for most individuals. Unfortunately, people frequently read in sub-optimal conditions (Charness & Dijkstra, 1999), which can degrade the perceptual quality of the text, such as reading a book in inadequate lighting or reading an electronic display in direct sunlight. Degraded text may affect older adults to a greater extent than younger adults because of age-related vision declines. However, readers may be able to compensate for text that is difficult to perceive by taking advantage of contextual information contained in language. This study examined age differences in this reading strategy, by comparing words that were highly predictable from their sentence context to words that were less predictable. In addition, text was presented in three levels of text/background contrast (high, medium, low) to explore the effects of contrast reduction. The findings of this study have implications for designing printed materials that facilitate reading for older adults.

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Age-Related Differences in Reading Text Presented with Degraded Contrast

Abstract

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