Cui Ying, Wang Xuejiao, Zhang Qingfang
Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, Beijing, PR China.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2025 Sep;78(9):1799-1821. doi: 10.1177/17470218241292020. Epub 2024 Nov 8.
It remains unknown how language-production processes decline with age. Using a picture-word interference task, the aim of this study was to investigate the influence of aging on lexical access and the contributions of language-specific and domain-general factors to semantic, phonological, and orthographic effects in Chinese spoken word production. After controlling for years of education, language comprehension, and domain-general cognitive abilities, we found a larger semantic interference effect for older speakers than for younger speakers, while the phonological effect and orthographic effect were comparable for the two age groups, supporting the transmission deficit hypothesis. Furthermore, discourse comprehension and general cognitive abilities were found to contribute to the phonological effect in older adults, but not in younger adults. Our findings indicate that both language-specific factors and domain-general factors contribute to the aging of spoken word production together.
语言产生过程如何随年龄下降仍不清楚。本研究旨在通过图片-单词干扰任务，调查衰老对词汇提取的影响，以及特定语言因素和领域通用因素对汉语口语单词产生中语义、语音和正字法效应的贡献。在控制了受教育年限、语言理解和领域通用认知能力后，我们发现老年说话者比年轻说话者有更大的语义干扰效应，而两个年龄组的语音效应和正字法效应相当，这支持了传递缺陷假说。此外，我们发现话语理解和一般认知能力对老年人的语音效应有贡献，但对年轻人没有。我们的研究结果表明，特定语言因素和领域通用因素共同导致了口语产生的衰老。
