TEXT-PROCESSING VARIABLES PREDICT THE READABILITY OF EVERYDAY DOCUMENTS READ BY OLDER ADULTS

A MODEL is presented to predict the readability of documents encounter ed by older adults. The documents studied are contained in the Educati onal Testing Service's Test of Basic Skills (1977 edition) and require readers to answer questions about charts (e.g., bus schedules), label s (e.g., plant spray labels and prescriptions), and forms (e.g., = for ms). The components of the model came from theoretical and empirical w ork on discourse processing and include such factors as discourse stru cture, emphasis, and position of an answer in a linguistic analysis of the everyday document. A sample of 482 adults from 52 to 93 years of age took the everyday problems test as well as a psychometric ability battery. The correlation was .54 (p < .01) between the readability sco res for test items predicted by the model and the percentage of older adults correctly answering those items. In addition, the more difficul t test items as identified by the model were correlated more highly wi th fluid intelligence abilities (figural relations and induction), cry stallized intelligence abilities (vocabulary, experiential evaluation) , and with memory span.