Effects of age on the ability to remember common and rare proper names

The effects of age and education on executive functioning and oral naming performance in greek cypriot adults: the neurocognitive study for the aging

BACKGROUND/AIMS

Age, educational experiences, language and culture can affect linguistic-cognitive performance. This is the first systematic study investigating linguistic-cognitive aging in Greek Cypriot adults focusing on executive functioning (EF) and oral naming performance.

METHOD

Three hundred and fifty-nine participants were included, a group of young-old, aged 60-75 years (n = 231), and a group of old-old participants, aged 76 years and older (n = 128). Participants in each age group were divided into three education groups: 0-4 years (n = 50), 5-9 years (n = 198), and 10 years of education and higher (n = 111). Participants were administered 5 measures of EF along with measures of receptive vocabulary and confrontational naming.

RESULTS

There was a significant relationship between the EF composite score and all language measures. MANOVA (α = 0.05) indicated significant age and education effects on most measures of EF and language. Performance on receptive vocabulary and cognitive shift remained stable across age groups, but was mediated by education.

CONCLUSION

Education plays a significant role on all measures requiring semantic organization, speed of information processing, cognitive shift, mental flexibility, receptive vocabulary and confrontational naming. Furthermore, strategic thinking has a role in semantic knowledge, word retrieval and semantic access in healthy aging. We conclude with clinical implications and assessment considerations in aphasia.

Meeting Mr Davis vs Mr Davin: Effects of name frequency on learning proper names in young and older adults

Two theoretical frameworks relevant to proper name learning in ageing make competing predictions about the effects of name frequency. Under an inhibition model, common (high-frequency; HF) proper names will be harder to learn and remember than rare (low-frequency; LF) names, whereas under a transmission deficit model, HF names will have the advantage. Young adults (ages 18-31) and two groups of healthy older adults (ages 60-74 and 75-89) learned HF (e.g., Davis) and LF (e.g., Davin) surnames in association with new faces. Young adults recalled more names than older or oldest adults, and participants of all ages recalled more HF than LF names. There was no interaction between age and name frequency: The difference favouring HF names was similar in magnitude across age groups. All evidence runs contrary to the inhibitory model's prediction that interference makes learning HF names difficult.

Aging, encoding, and word retrieval: distinguishing phonological and memory processes

Word retrieval deficits are one of the most common complaints among older adults. The Transmission Deficit Hypothesis predicts that phonologically similar names would be harder for older adults to encode and retrieve. Results indicated that overall older adults encoded and recalled fewer words than younger adults when given only one trial and when given multiple trials to criterion. For both experiments, proper names were more difficult to retrieve than common nouns, and phonologically similar words were more difficult to retrieve than phonologically different words for both older and younger adults. Age differences were not evident for retrieving phonologically similar items or names but older adults did need more trials to encode phonologically similar items and names. Age differences for phonologically similar items and names appear related to encoding processes with retrieval of these items consistently hard for both older and younger adults.

'What's his name?' A comparison of elderly participants' and undergraduate students' misnamings

This study examined the effects of age on the types of errors produced when recalling names of faces. The types of errors included confusions (errors within the target set), intrusions (errors outside the target set), errors phonologically similar to the target, errors not phonologically similar to the target, and errors containing the same number of syllables as the target name. Participants included 49 elderly adults (57-85 years) and 48 undergraduate students (18-44 years). Age group had a significant effect on the number of name errors produced (n=681 for elderly and n=422 for undergraduates). Elderly participants produced more confusions than their younger counterparts; however, younger participants produced significantly more intrusions. The age groups also differed in their production of error names that were phonologically similar to the target name. The elderly participants produced more errors that were not phonologically similar to the target than the young adults. The results are discussed with regard to theories of name-face association and tip-of-the-tongue phenomena.

Stimulus modality and verbal learning performance in normal aging

The present study investigated the effects of modality presentation on the verbal learning performance of 26 older adults and 26 younger cohorts. A multitrial free-recall paradigm was implemented incorporating three modalities: Auditory, Visual, and simultaneous Auditory plus Visual. Older subjects learned fewer words than younger subjects but their rate of learning was similar to that of the younger group. The visual presentation of objects (with or without the simultaneous auditory presentation of names) resulted in better learning, recall, and retrieval of information than the auditory presentation alone.

Retrieving names in old age: short- and (very) long-term effects of repetition

Two experiments are reported that examine the effects of repetition on name retrieval in younger adults (in their 50s and 60s) and older adults (in their 70s and 80s). In Experiment 1, the subjects were asked to name a set of famous faces four times over the course of a 1-h session. Younger subjects produced significantly more correct responses than did older subjects. There was significant improvement with repeated attempts at naming, with younger and older subjects benefiting equally in terms of increasing numbers of correct responses across the session. In contrast, there was a highly significant age deficit in picture recognition over a similar retention interval. A qualitative analysis of naming responses (full name vs. part of the name) provided support for the view that aging and nonrecent use have equivalent effects on retrieval. In Experiment 2, younger subjects (but not older subjects) were significantly more likely to correctly name famous faces that they had seen 22 months previously than to correctly name new famous faces. In contrast, older subjects (but not younger subjects) were significantly more likely to produce erroneous names to famous faces that they had seen 22 months previously than to new famous faces. It is concluded that repetition priming may be relatively unaffected by aging over short retention intervals (Experiment 1) but not over a very long retention interval (Experiment 2).