Age-related differences in idea generation and selection for propositional language

ABSTRACT

Conceptual preparation mechanisms such as novel idea generation and selection from amongst competing alternatives are critical for language production and may contribute to age-related language deficits. This study investigated whether older adults show diminished idea generation and selection abilities, compared to younger adults. Twenty younger (18–35 years) and 20 older (60–80 years) adults completed two novel experimental tasks, an idea generation task and a selection task. Older participants were slower than younger participants overall on both tasks. Importantly, this difference was more pronounced for task conditions with greater demands on generation and selection. Older adults were also significantly reduced on a semantic, but not phonemic, word fluency task. Overall, the older group showed evidence of age-related decline specific to idea generation and selection ability. This has implications for the message formulation stage of propositional language decline in normal aging.

KEYWORDS:

• Normal aging
• propositional language
• conceptual preparation
• idea generation
• selection

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award scholarship awarded to the first author by The University of Queensland, on behalf of the Queensland Government Department of Education. For the duration of this study GR was the recipient of an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award [DE120101119] and is currently supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council Boosting Dementia Research Leadership Fellowship [APP1135769].