The Effects of Age on Korean Word Recognition and Vocabulary Retention

This research examines how vocabulary knowledgeand recognition of Korean words differ by age, focusing on wordfrequency and morphological structure. Individuals from threeage cohort’s children, young adults, and older adults completedtasks involving recognizing and delayed recalling simple andcomplex Korean words of high and low frequency. Resultsshowed pronounced age-related differences: young adultsoutperformed children and older adults in recognition andrecall. Across groups, high-frequency and simplemorphologically structured words were recognized and recalledbetter. However, all participants exhibited the most significanteffects of frequency and complexity during recall andrecognition in younger and older adults. Analysis revealedrobust interaction effects between age and certain linguisticparameters, suggesting that cognitive processing strategiesdiffer with age. These results highlight a particular gap in lexicalaccess and retrieval models that account for age, alongsideeducational and cognitive intervention frameworks. Thefindings are the first to provide evidence of the interplaybetween age-related factors and the processing of words in anagglutinative language.