The effects of cognitive changes across the adult lifespan on lexical and grammatical processing
Final Report Abstract
The global rise in life expectancy has brought about various age-related challenges, including changes in cognition. While the effects of aging on some aspects of cognition (e.g., memory) are well-documented, our understanding of age-related changes in the critical capacity of language and its relation to non-linguistic cognition remains limited. This research addresses this gap, focusing on age-related changes in lexical and grammatical processing. The project investigated the developmental trajectory of language processing in participants ages 20 to 90 using a cross-sectional design. We examined the production and comprehension of morphologically simplex and complex words and related these to cognitive skills and sociodemographic variables. Morphological processing has been argued to involve both grammatical (regular/default forms) and lexical processing (irregular/non-default forms), presenting an ideal test case to study age effects on different mechanisms of language processing. Work package (WP) 1 examined plural noun production and comprehension using timed elicitation (“What is the plural of this word?”) and cross-modal priming with lexical decision (“Is this a word or not?”). Of interest was the predicted contrast between default (rule-based) and non-default (memorized) plural forms, and how aging impacts their processing. WP 2 assessed how aging affects speakers’ production and comprehension of morphologically simple words using picture naming, word-picture matching, reading aloud, and lexical decision, enabling the comparison of age effects on morphologically complex and simple words. WP 3 investigated how aging effects on language processing from WPs 1 and 2 can be tied to age-related changes in non-linguistic cognition. Specifically, the results from this WP addressed the question of whether aging exhibits global effects on language processing (i.e., on lexical and grammatical processes alike), or whether the effects are selective, with some aspects of processing being more greatly affected than others. This study reveals not only how aging affects language, but it also provides crucial insights about aging (independent of language) and insights about language (independent of aging). The research may also have significant translational impacts as the findings could serve as a baseline for the study of age-related disorders affecting language, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Publications
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Healthy aging affects storage-based, but not rule-based inflectional processing: A cross-modal priming study on German plurals. Presentation at the 5th Corpora for Language and Aging Research conference (CLARe5), Anchorage AK, USA.
Reifegerste, J.
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Language processing across the lifespan: What changes, what doesn’t, and why? Invited talk at the conference “Diversity in Language and Cognition,” Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, Germany.
Reifegerste, J.
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Sprache im Alter — was verändert sich, was bleibt, und warum? Presentation at the Potsdamer Tag der Wissenschaften, Potsdam, Germany.
Reifegerste, J.
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The more you know: Age-related facilitation in the production of irregular morphology. Poster at the 12th International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada.
Trifonova, A. & Reifegerste, J.
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Language in the aging mind and brain. Invited keynote at the workshop “Language Processing in Aging,” University of the Basque Country, Vitória, Spain.
Reifegerste, J.
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Morphological processing across the adult lifespan: a tale of gains and losses. Journal of Language and Aging Research, 2(1), 85-143.
Reifegerste, Jana
