Inference comprehension during reading: influence of age and education in normal adults

Purpose:To determine the effect of age and education on inferential comprehension from written texts in normal individuals.Methods:A total of 224 normal adults were stratified into nine groups according to age (young: 18–39 years, adults: 40–59 years, and elderly: 60–79 years) and educational level (low ≤4 years, medium: 5–8 years and high >8 years) and were evaluated through the battery La gestion de l'implicite (Implicit Information Management Test) to determine the ability to make inferences through different types of questions: explicit, logical, distractor, pragmatic and others.Results:The elderly showed worse performance for total score and distractor questions. Regarding educational level, all groups differed on explicit, logical, distractor questions, and on total test score. Subjects with high schooling performed better on pragmatic inferences and others.Conclusion:Age influence on the comprehension of inferences may be due to difficulties in attention and executive functions. The strong effect of education can be explained by the interaction of inferential abilities with other cognitive functions such as working memory, vocabulary span, as well as world knowledge