Influences of Word Frequency, Context, and Age 1 Running Head: INFLUENCES OF WORD FREQUENCY, CONTEXT, AND AGE Influences of Word Frequency, Context, and Age on Spelling

Previous research has suggested that similar to other age-related declines in language production, the ability to produce the correct spellings of words decreases in old age (e.g., Abrams & Stanley, 2004; MacKay & Abrams, 1998; MacKay, Abrams, & Pedroza, 1999; Stuart-Hamilton & Rabbitt, 1997). However, aging alone does not predict spelling deficits. For example, spelling ability interacts with age, where older adults who are categorized as good spellers do not show declines in spelling relative to younger adults (Margolin & Abrams, 2007). This chapter presents an experiment that explored other factors that potentially might interact with age: word frequency and the degree of context, i.e., support, provided for spelling retrieval. Sixty younger adults (18-25 years) and 60 older adults (60-86 years) completed three tasks involving the spelling of words that were either relatively low or high in frequency. In the full recall task, words were presented auditorily, and participants were asked to write down the correct spelling of these words. In the partial recall task, auditorily presented words were given in conjunction with a word fragment that omitted a portion of the word (1-6 letters), and participants attempted to fill in the missing letters. In the recognition task, words were presented in a multiple-choice format, with one correctly spelled word and four misspelled variants, and participants were asked to select the word that was correctly spelled. The results showed that for both age groups, lowerfrequency words were spelled correctly less often than higher-frequency words in all tasks, with greater frequency effects on the recall tasks than the recognition task. However, the negative effect of spelling lower-frequency words was especially pronounced for younger adults. Furthermore, older adults outperformed younger adults on all spelling tasks, particularly full recall and recognition. These findings suggest that compensatory factors like high word frequency and greater retrieval support are most beneficial to people with greater spelling Influences of Word Frequency, Context, and Age 3 difficulties, who were the younger adults in the present study. Older adults’ greater familiarity with words and their spellings can therefore be advantageous to their spelling recognition and retrieval. Influences of Word Frequency, Context, and Age 4