Work

Natural and constrained language production as a function of age and cognitive abilities

Year: 2010

Type: article

Abstract: Although it is often claimed that verbal abilities are relatively well maintained across the adult lifespan, certain aspects of language production have been found to exhibit cross-sectional differences and longitudinal declines. In the current project age-related differences in controlled and naturalistic elicited language production tasks were examined within the context of a reference battery of cognitive abilities in a moderately large sample of individuals aged 18-90. The results provide support for age-related increases in lexical sophistication and diversity at the discourse level, and declines in grammatical complexity in controlled and naturalistic contexts. Further, age-related decreases in facility with complex grammatical constructions in controlled sentence production were statistically independent of the cognitive abilities assessed in this project.

Source: Language and Cognitive Processes

DOI: 10.1080/01690965.2010.507489

Authors: Cristina D. Rabaglia, Timothy A. Salthouse

Institutions: New York University, University of Virginia

Language: English

Topic: Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism

Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: National Institute on Aging

Awards: Effects of Aging on Executive Processes, Short-term cognitive change in adults from 18 to 80