Age-Related Changes in Predictive Capacity Versus Internal Model Adaptability: Electrophysiological Evidence that Individual Differences Outweigh Effects of Age

Hierarchical predictive coding has been identified as a possible unifying principle of brain function, and recent work in cognitive neuroscience has examined how it may be affected by age related changes. Using language comprehension as a test case, the present study aimed to dissociate age-related changes in prediction generation versus internal model adaptation following a prediction error. Event related brain potentials (ERPs) were measured in a group of older adults (60-81 years; n = 40) as they read sentences of the form "The opposite of black is white/yellow/nice." Replicating previous work in young adults, results showed a target related P300 for the expected antonym ("white"; an eff…