Am J Speech Lang Pathol. 2014 Feb;23(1):36-45. doi: 10.1044/1058-0360(2013/12-0136).
The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between vocabulary knowledge and word retrieval in younger and older adults.
Three tests of word retrieval and 2 tests of word knowledge were administered to 140 Hebrew-speaking adults, half of whom were younger (M(age) = 24.20 years) and half of whom were older (M(age) = 74.83 years).
Younger adults outperformed older adults on tests of retrieval, whereas older adults outperformed younger adults on tests of vocabulary, and no association was found between the 2 skills across the entire sample. Once age and education were taken into account, both skills contributed to the prediction of each other and were similarly related within each group. Older adults performed equally well when required to produce and recognize word meanings, whereas younger adults were better at recognition than at production.
Older age is associated with better knowledge and with retrieval difficulties, yet individual differences in vocabulary within each age group affect level of retrieval, and variability in search skills affects performance on vocabulary tests. Although the assessment of vocabulary is not free of retrieval demands, older adults as a group are more successful than are younger adults at producing word definitions, most likely because their knowledge is more complete.
本研究旨在探讨词汇知识与年轻人和老年人词汇提取之间的关系。
对 140 名讲希伯来语的成年人进行了 3 项词汇提取测试和 2 项词汇知识测试，其中一半是年轻人（M（年龄）= 24.20 岁），一半是老年人（M（年龄）= 74.83 岁）。
年轻人在提取测试中表现优于老年人，而老年人在词汇测试中表现优于年轻人，整个样本中这两种技能之间没有关联。考虑到年龄和教育程度后，这两种技能都能相互预测，在每个群体中也具有相似的相关性。老年人在要求他们产生和识别词义时表现相同，而年轻人在识别方面的表现优于产生方面。
老年人的词汇知识更好，词汇提取更困难，但每个年龄段内词汇的个体差异会影响提取水平，搜索技能的差异会影响词汇测试的表现。虽然词汇评估并非没有提取要求，但老年人作为一个群体在产生单词定义方面比年轻人更成功，这很可能是因为他们的知识更完整。
