Article published in:
Language Development: The lifespan perspective
Edited by Annette Gerstenberg and Anja Voeste
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 37] 2015
► pp. 59–76

Language production in late life

As individuals age, their speech changes. Nonpathological changes to the brain’s structure and organization affect the function of the prefrontal cortex, the lateralization of functions, and neuromodulation of synaptic transmission. As a result, word-finding problems increase, speech becomes increasingly constrained by working memory limitations, and older adults become more susceptible to the effects of distractions and dual-task demands. At the same time, aging affects social relationships and interactions. Negative stereotypes of older adults are pervasive, resulting in both over- and under-accommodations to aging, the use of elderspeak, and the assumption that older adults are prone to be excessively talkative.
Published online: 22 July 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.37.04kem
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Hummert, Mary Lee
2017.  In Encyclopedia of Geropsychology, ► pp. 569 ff. Crossref logo
Nassenstein, Nico
2019. Manipulation in late life. International Journal of Language and Culture 6:1 ► pp. 45 ff. Crossref logo
Pichler, Heike, Suzanne Evans Wagner & Ashley Hesson
2018. Old-age language variation and change: Confronting variationist ageism. Language and Linguistics Compass 12:6 ► pp. e12281 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 04 may 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

References

References

Albert, M.S., Heller, H. & Milberg, W.
1988 Changes in naming ability with age. Psychology and Aging 3: 173–178. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Arbuckle, T.Y., Pushkar Gold, D & Andres, D.
1986 Cognitive functioning of older people in relation to social and personality variables. Psychology and Aging 1: 55–62. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Arbuckle, T.Y., Nohara-LeClair, M. & Pushkar, D.
2000 Effects of off-target verbosity on communication efficiency in a referential communication task. Psychology and Aging 15: 65–77. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Arnsten, A.F.T., Cai, J.X., Steere, J.C. & Goldman-Rakic, P.S.
1995 Dopamine D2 receptor mechanisms contribute to age-related cognitive decline: The effects of quinpirole on memory and motor performance in monkeys. Journal of Neuroscience 15: 3429–3439.Google Scholar
Bäckman, L., Almkvist, O., Andersson, J., Nordberg, A., Winblad, B., Reineck, R. & Långström, B.
1997 Brain activation in young and older adults during implicit and explicit retrieval. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 9: 378–391. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bäckman, L. & Farde, F.
2005 The role of dopamine systems in cognitive aging. In Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging, R. Cabeza, L. Nyberg & D. Park (eds), 59–84. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Baddeley, A.
1986 Working Memory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
2000 The episodic buffer: A new component of working memory? Trends in Cognitive Science 4: 417–423. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Baltes, P.B. & Lindenberger, U.
1997 Emergence of a powerful connection between sensory and cognitive functions across the adult lifespan: a new window to the study of cognitive aging? Psychology and Aging 12: 12–21. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bernstein, B.
1971 Class, Codes, and Control. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bickerton, D.
1981 Roots of Language. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma.Google Scholar
Bonnesen, J.L. & Hummert, M.L.
2002 Painful self-disclosures of older adults in relation to aging stereotypes and perceived motivations. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 21: 275–301. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Botwinick, J. ;amp;. Siegler, I.C.
1980 Intellectual ability among the elderly: simultaneous cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons. Developmental Psychology 16: 49–53. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bowles, R.P., Grimm, K.J. & McArdle, J.J.
2005 A structural factor analysis of vocabulary knowledge and relations to age. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences B60(5): 234–241. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Burke, D.
1997 Language, aging, and inhibitory deficits: evaluation of a theory. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 52B(6): 254–264. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Burke, D.M. & Laver, G.D.
1990 Aging and word retrieval: selective age deficits in language. In Aging and Cognition: Mental Processes, Self-Awareness, and Interventions, E.A. Lovelace (ed.), 281–300. New York, NY: North Holland. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Burke, D.M., MacKay, D.G., Worthley, J.S. & Wade, E.
1991 On the tip of the tongue: What causes word finding failures in young and older adults. Journal of Memory and Language 30: 542–579. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cabeza, R.
2002 Hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults: The HAROLD model. Psychology and Aging 17: 85–100. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cabeza, R., McIntosh, A.R., Tulving, E., Nyberg, L. & Grady, C.L.
1997 Age-related differences in effective neural connectivity during encoding and recall. Neuroreport: An International Journal for the Rapid Communication of Research in Neuroscience 8: 3479–3483. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cheung, H. & Kemper, S.
1992 Competing complexity metrics and adults’ production of complex sentences. Applied Psycholinguistics 13: 53–76. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chudasama, Y. & Robbins, T.W.
2006 Functions of frontostriatal systems in cognition: comparative neuropsychopharmacological studies in rats, monkeys, and humans. Biological Psychology 73: 19–38. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cowan, N.
1995 Attention and Memory: An Integrated Framework. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
2001 The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral-and-Brain-Science 24: 87–185. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Coupland, N., Coupland, J., Giles, H., Henwood, K. & Wiemann, J.
1988 Elderly self-disclosure: Interactional and intergroup issues. Language and Communication 8: 109–133. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Coupland, N., Henwood, K., Coupland, J. & Giles, H.
1990 Accommodating troubles-talk: the young’s management of elderly self-disclosure. In Reception and Response: Hearer Creativity and the Analysis of the Spoken and Written Texts, F. McGregor & R.S. White (eds.), 112–144. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Daneman, M. & Blennerhassett, A.
1984 How to assess the listening comprehension skills of prereaders. Journal of Educational Psychology 76: 1372–1381. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Daneman, M. & Carpenter, P.A.
1980 Individual differences in working memory and reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Ability 19: 450–466. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Daneman, M. & Merikle, P.M.
1996 Working memory and language comprehension: A meta-analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 3: 422–433. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
de Keyser, J., Herregodts, P. & Ebinger, G.
1990 The mesoneocortical dopamine neuron system. Neurology 40: 1660–1662. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dennis, N.A. & Cabeza, R.
2008 Neuroimaging of healthy cognitive aging. In The Handbook of Aging and Cognition, F.I.M. Craik & T.A. Salthouse (eds.), 2001–2054. New York NY: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Dougherty, R.F., Ben-Shachar, M., Deutsch, G.K., Hernandez, A., Fox, G.R. & Wandell, B.A.
2007 Temporal-callosal pathway diffusivity predicts phonological skills in children. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 101(20): 8556–8561. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gold, D., Andres, D., Arbuckle, T. & Schwartzman, A.
1988 Measurement and correlates of verbosity in elderly people. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 43B(2): 27–33. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Grady, C.L., McIntosh, A.R. & Craik, F.I.M.
2005 Task-related activity in prefrontal cortex and its relation to recognition memory performance in young and old adults. Neuropsychologia 43: 1466–1481. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Grady, C.L., McIntosh, A.R., Rajah, M.N., Beig, S. & Craik, F.I.M.
1999 The effects of age on the neural correlates of episodic encoding. Cerebral Cortex 9: 805–814. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
GSA
2012 Communicating with Older Adults: An Evidence-Based Review of What Really Works. Washington DC: Gerontological Society of America.Google Scholar
Hasher, L. & Zacks, R.T.
1988 Working memory, comprehension, and aging: A review and a new view. In The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Vol. 22, G.H. Bower (ed.), 193–226. New York NY: Academic Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hassol, L., Margaret, A. & Cameron, N.
1952 The production of language disorganization through personalized distraction. Journal of Psychology 33: 289–299. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Heller, R.B. & Dobbs, A.R.
1993 Age differences in word finding in discourse and nondiscourse situations. Psychology and Aging 8: 443–450. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hitch, G.J., Towse, J.N. & Hutton, U.
2001 What limits children’s working memory span? Theoretical accounts and applications for scholastic development. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 130: 184–198. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hultsch, D.F., Hertzog, C., Dixon, R.A. & Small, B.J.
1998 Memory Change in the Aged. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Hummert, M.L.
1994 Stereotypes of the elderly and patronizing speech. In Interpersonal Communication in Older Adulthood: Interdisciplinary Theory and Research, M.L. Hummert, J.F. Nussbaum & J.M. Wiemann (eds.), 162–184. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hummert, M.L., Garstka, T.A., Ryan, E.B. & Bonnesen, J.L.
2004 The role of age stereotypes in interpersonal communication. In Handbook of Communication and Aging Research, J.F. Nussbaum & J. Coupland (eds), 91–114. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Huttenlocher, P. & Debholkar, A.
1997 Developmental anatomy of prefrontal cortex. In Development of the Prefrontal Cortex Evolution, Neurobiology, and Behavior, N. Krasnegor, G. Reid Lyon & P. Goldman-Rakic (eds), 69–84. Baltimore MD: Brooks.Google Scholar
James, L.E. & Burke, D.M.
2000 Phonological priming effects on word retrieval and tip-of-the-tongue experiences in young and older adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 26: 1378–1391. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
James, L.E., Burke, D.M., Austin, A. & Hulme, E.
1998 Production and perception of “verbosity” in younger and older adults. Psychology and Aging 13: 355–368. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Jou, J. & Harris, R.J.
1992 The effect of divided attention on speech production. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 30: 301–304. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kemper, S.
1994 Elderspeak: speech accommodations to older adults. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition 1: 17–28. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2009 The role of working memory in language development over the life span. In Language Development over the Life Span, K. de Bot, S. Makoni & R. Schrauf (eds), 271–288. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Kemper, S. & Harden, T.
1999 Experimentally disentangling what’s beneficial about elderspeak from what’s not. Psychology and Aging 14: 656–670. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kemper, S., Herman, R. & Lian, C.
2003a Age differences in sentence production. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 58B(5): 260–269. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kemper, S., Herman, R.E. & Lian, C.
2003b The costs of doing two things at once for young and older adults: talking while walking, finger tapping, and ignoring speech or noise. Psychology and Aging 18: 181–192. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kemper, S., Herman, R.E. & Liu, C.J.
2004 Sentence production by young and older adults in controlled contexts. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 59B(5): 220–224. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kemper, S., Herman, R.E. & Nartowicz, J.
2005 Different effects of dual task demands on the speech of young and older adults. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition 12: 340–358. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kemper, S., Kynette, D., Rash, S. & O’Brien, K.
1989 Life-span changes to adults’ language: Effects of memory and genre. Applied Psycholinguistics 10: 49–66. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kemper, S., LaBarge, E., Ferraro, R., Cheung, H.T., Cheung, H. & Storandt, M.
1993 On the preservation of syntax in Alzheimer’s disease: Evidence from written sentences. Archives of Neurology 50: 81–86. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kemper, S., Schmalzried, R., Herman, R., Leedahl, S. & Mohankumar, D.
2009 The effects of aging and dual task demands on language production. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition 16: 241–259. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kemper, S. Schmalzried, R., Hoffman, L., & Herman, R.
2010 Aging and the vulnerability of speech to dual task demands. Psychology and Aging 25: 949–956. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kemper, S. & Sumner, A.
2001 The structure of verbal abilities in young and older adults. Psychology and Aging 16: 312–322. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kwong See, S.T & Ryan, E.B.
1996 Cognitive mediation of discourse processing in later life. Journal of Speech Language Pathology and Audiology 20: 109–117.Google Scholar
Leather, C.V. & Henry, L.A.
1994 Working memory span and phonological awareness tasks as predictors of early reading ability. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 58: 88–111. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Levy, B.
1996 Improving memory in old age through implicit self-stereotyping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71: 1092–1107. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Levy, B.R.
2003 Mind matters: Cognitive and physical effects of aging self-stereotypes. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 58B(4): 203–211. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lezak, M.D., Howieson, D.B., Loring, D.W., Hannay, H.J. & Fischer, J.S.
2004 Neuropsychological Assessment, 4th edn. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Li, S.-C.
2005 Neurocomputational perspectives linking neuromodulation, processing noise, representational distinctiveness, and cognitive aging. In Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging: Linking Cognitive and Cerebral Aging, R. Cabeza, L. Nyberg & D. Park (eds), 354–379. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Li, S.-C., Lindenberger, U. & Frensch, P.A.
2000 Unifying cognitive aging: From neuromodulation to representation to cognition. Neurocomputing: An International Journal 32-33: 879–890. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Li, S.-C. & Silkström, S.
2002 Integrative neurocomputational perspectives on cognitive aging, neuromodulation, and representation. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Review 26: 795–808. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lindenberger, U. & Baltes, P.B.
1994 Sensory functioning and intelligence in old age: A strong connection. Psychology and Aging 9: 339–355. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lyons, K., Kemper, S., LaBarge, E., Ferraro, F.R., Balota, D. & Storandt, M.
1994 Language and Alzheimer’s disease: A reduction in syntactic complexity. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition 50: 81–86.Google Scholar
Madden, D.J., Langley, L.K., Denny, L.L., Turkington, T.G., Provenzale, J.M., Hawk, T.C. & Coleman, R.E.
2002 Adult age differences in visual word identification: functional neuroanatomy by positron emission tomography. Brain and Cognition 49: 297–321. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mattson, M.P., Gleichmann, M. & Cheng, A.
2008 Mitochondria in neuroplasticity and neurological disorders. Neuron 60: 748–766. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
McElree, B.
2001 Working memory and focal attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 27: 817–835. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Miyake, A., Friedman, N.P., Emerson, M.J., Witzki, A.H. & Howerter, A.
2000 The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: a latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology 41: 49–100. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Oberauer, K. & Kliegl, R.
2006 A formal model of capacity limits in working memory. Journal of Memory and Language 55: 601–626. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pushkar, D., Basevitz, P., Arbuckle, T., Nohara-LeClair, M., Lapidus, S. & Peled, M.
2000 Social behavior and off-target verbosity in elderly people. Psychology and Aging 15: 361–374. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pushkar Gold, D & Arbuckle, T.Y.
1995 A longitudinal study of off-target verbosity. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 50B(6): 307–325. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Raz, N.
2005 The aging brain observed in vivo: differential changes and their modifiers. In Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging: Linking Cognitive and Cerebral Aging, R. Cabeza, L. Nyberg & D. Park (eds), 19–57 Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Raz, N., Lindenberger, U., Rodrigue, K.M., Kennedy, K.M., Head, D., Williamson, A., Dahle, C., Gerstorf, D. & Acker, J.D.
2005 Regional brain changes in aging healthy adults: general trends, individual differences and modifiers. Cerebral Cortex 15: 1679–1689. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Reuter-Lorenz, P.A., Jonides, J., Smith, E.E., Hartley, A., Miller, A., Marshuetz, C. & Koeppe, R.A.
2000 Age differences in the frontal lateralization of verbal and spatial working memory revealed by PET. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12: 174–187. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, E.B., Anas, A.P. & Friedman, D.
2006 Evaluations of older adult assertiveness in problematic clinical encounters. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 25: 129–145. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, E.B., Bieman-Copland, S., Kwong See, S.T, Ellis, C.H. & Anas, A.P.
2002 Age excuses: Conversational management of memory failures in older adults. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 57B(3): 256–267. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, E.B., Giles, H., Bartolucci, G. & Henwood, K.
1986 Psycholinguistic and social psychological components of communication by and with the elderly. Language and Communication 6: 1–24. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Saint-Cyr, J.A., Bronstein, Y.L. & Cummings, J.L.
2002 Neurobehavioral consequences of neurosurgical treatments and focal lesions of frontal-subcortical circuits. In Principles of Frontal Lobe Function, D.T. Stuss & R.T. Knight (eds), 408–427. Oxford: OUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Salat, D.H., Kaye, J.A. & Janowsky, J.S.
2002 Greater orbital prefrontal volume selectively predicts worse working memory performance in older adults. Cerebral Cortex 12(5): 494–505. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Salthouse, T.A.
1994 How many causes are there of aging-related decrements in cognitive functioning? Developmental Review 14: 413–437. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1996 The processing-speed theory of adult age differences in cognition. Psychological Review 3: 403–428. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Shafto, M.A., Burke, D.M., Stamatakis, E.A., Tam, P.P. & Tyler, L.K.
2007 On the tip-of-the-tongue: Neural correlates of increased word-finding failures in normal aging. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 19: 2060–2070. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Shafto, M.A., Stamatakis, E.A., Tam, P.P. & Tyler, L.K.
2009 Word retrieval failures in old age: The relationship between structure and function. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 22: 1530–1540. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Southwood, M.H. & Dagenais, P.
2001 The role of attention in apraxic errors. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 15: 113–116. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Spreen, O. & Strauss, E.
1998 A Compendium of Neuropsychological Tests, 2nd edn. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Stamatakis, E.A., Marslen-Wilson, W.D., Tyler, L.K. & Fletcher, P.
2005 Cingulate control of fronto-temporal integration reflects linguistic demands: A three-way interaction in functional connectivity. Neuroimage 28: 115–121. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Stamatakis, E.A., Shafto, M.A., Williams, G., Tam, P.P. & Tyler, L.K.
2011 White matter changes and word finding failures with increasing age. PLoS ONE. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Suhara, T., Fukuda, H., Inoue, O., Itoh, T., Suzuki, K., Yamasaki, T. & Tateno, Y.
1991 Age-related changes in human D1 dopamine receptors measured by positron emission tomography. Psychopharmacology 103: 41–45. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Trunk, D.L. & Abrams, L.
2009 Do younger and older adults’ communicative goals influence off-topic speech in autobiographical narratives? Psychology and Aging 24: 324–337. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Van der Linden, M, Hupet, M., Feyereisen, P., Schelstraete, M.-A., Bestgen, Y., Bruyer, R., Lories, G., El Ahmadi, A. & Seron, X.
1999 Cognitive mediators of age-related differences in language comprehension and verbal memory performance. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition 6: 32–55. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vitevich, M.S. & Sommers, M.S.
2003 The facilitative influence of phonological similarity and neighborhood frequency in speech production in younger and older adults. Memory and Cognition 31: 491–504. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Volkow, N.D., Wang, G.J., Fowler, J.S., Ding, Y.S., Gur, R.C., Gatley, J., Logan, J., Moberg, P.J., Hitzemann, R., Smith, G. & Pappas, N.
1998 Parallel loss of presynaptic and postsynaptic dopamine markers in normal aging. Annals of Neurology 44: 143–147. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
White, K.K. & Abrams, L.
2002 Does priming specific syllables during tip-of-the-tongue states facilitate word retrieval in older adults? Psychology and Aging 17: 226–235. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Williams, K.N., Herman, R. Gajewski, B. & Wilson, K.
2008 Elderspeak communication: Impact on dementia care. American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and other Dementias 24: 11–20. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Yoon, C., May, C.P. & Hasher, L.
1998 Aging, circadian arousal patterns, and cognition. In Aging, Cognition, and Self Reports, N. Schwarz, D. Park, B. Knauper & S. Sudman (eds), 117–143. Washington DC: Psychology Press.Google Scholar