Word learning is a multifaceted perceptual and cognitive task that is omnipresent in everyday life. Currently, it is unclear whether this ability is influenced by age, musical expertise or both variables. Accordingly, we used EEG and compared behavioral and electrophysiological indices of word learning between older adults with and without musical expertise (older adults' perspective) as well as between musically trained and untrained children, young adults, and older adults (lifespan perspective). Results of the older adults' perspective showed that the ability to learn new words is preserved in elderly, however, without a beneficial influence of musical expertise. Otherwise, results of the lifespan perspective revealed lower error rates and faster reaction times in young adults compared to children and older adults. Furthermore, musically trained children and young adults outperformed participants without musical expertise, and this advantage was accompanied by EEG manifestations reflecting faster learning and neural facilitation in accessing lexical-semantic representations.

中文翻译：

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使用横断面方法在儿童、年轻人和老年人中测试音乐专业知识对整个生命周期新词学习的影响

单词学习是一项多方面的感知和认知任务，在日常生活中无处不在。目前，尚不清楚这种能力是否受年龄、音乐专业知识或这两个变量的影响。因此，我们使用 EEG 并比较了有和没有音乐专业知识的老年人（老年人的角度）以及受过音乐训练和未受过训练的儿童、年轻人和老年人（寿命角度）之间单词学习的行为和电生理指标。老年人视角的结果表明，学习新单词的能力在老年人中得以保留，但没有音乐专业知识的有益影响。否则，寿命角度的结果显示，与儿童和老年人相比，年轻人的错误率更低，反应时间更快。此外，