YOUNG AND OLD ADULTS ABILITY TO USE DIFFERENT STANDARDS TO EVALUATE UNDERSTANDING

In Experiment 1 we examined young (mean age = 22.88 years) and old (me an age = 70.79 years) adults' ability to evaluate their understanding of texts. We examined ability to detect nonsense words (a lexical stan dard), violations of prior knowledge (an external consistency standard ), and inconsistent sentences (an internal consistency standard) that were nonadjacent in texts. Adults with more education detected more pr oblems than less educated adults, and older adults were less able than young to use an internal consistency standard. No age differences wer e found for lexical and external consistency standards. In Experiment 2, older adults' (mean age = 71.02 years) ability to use an internal c onsistency standard of evaluation was affected by the amount of materi al intervening between inconsistent sentences, with hindered performan ce for nonadjacent inconsistencies. This was not true for younger adul ts (mean age = 22.59 years). Results are discussed in terms of older a dults' possible retrieval difficulty and failure to regulate comprehen sion.