The Role of Executive Functions in Object- and Action-Naming among Older Adults

ABSTRACT

Background/Study Context: Lexical retrieval abilities and executive function skills decline with age. The extent to which these processes might be interdependent remains unknown. The aim of the current study was to examine whether individual differences in three executive functions (shifting, fluency, and inhibition) predicted naming performance in older adults.

Methods: The sample included 264 adults aged 55–84. Six measures of executive functions were combined to make three executive function composites scores. Lexical retrieval performance was measured by accuracy and response time on two tasks: object naming and action naming. We conducted a series of multiple regressions to test whether executive function performance predicts naming abilities in older adults.

Results: We found that different executive functions predicted naming speed and accuracy. Shifting predicted naming accuracy for both object and action naming while fluency predicted response times on both tests as well as object naming accuracy, after controlling for education, gender, age, working memory span, and speed of processing in all regressions. Interestingly, inhibition did not contribute to naming accuracy or response times on either task.

Conclusion: The findings support the notion that preservation of some executive functions contributes to successful naming in older adults and that different executive functions are associated with naming speed and accuracy.

Acknowledgments

We thank Rebecca Williams, Mira Goral, Christopher Brady, Rossie Clark-Cotton, Rebecca Brown, Shelley Amberg, Keely Sayers, Josh Berger, and Elaine Dibbs for help with the Language in the Aging Brain project, and our participants for their time. We also appreciate Jesse Sayers and Emmanuel Ojo for help with data extraction, Brendan McCaleb and Tammy Van for help with references and tables, and Deborah Burke, Judith Kroll, Katherine Dawson, Jet Vonk, and Marta Korytkowska for comments on the manuscript. This study was supported by NIA Grant R01-AG014345 (Albert & Obler, Co-PIs) and a Senior Research Career Scientist award from the VA Clinical Science R&D Service to Spiro. The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Notes

¹ Some researchers use the term ‘executive functions’ to refer to the same set of control abilities. In this paper, we employ the term ‘cognitive control’ to refer to the general concept of top-down control mechanisms used to perform cognitive operations efficiently. We use ‘executive functions’ to refer to specific aspects of cognitive control such as inhibition or shifting.

² The term ‘fluency’ in this paper is used to reference the executive function engaged in a task such as the verbal fluency task. Some researchers have called this component “efficiency of access to long-term memory” (Adrover-Roig, Sesé, Barceló, & Palmer, 2012; Fisk & Sharp, 2004) and have found evidence that it is separable from other executive functions such as inhibition, working memory, and shifting.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by NIA Grant R01-AG014345 (Albert & Obler, Co-PIs) and a Senior Research Career Scientist award from the VA Clinical Science R&D Service to Spiro.