Bryan J, Luszcz M A, Crawford J R
School of Psychology, Flinders University of South Australia, Adelaide,
Psychol Aging. 1997 Sep;12(3):473-8. doi: 10.1037//0882-7974.12.3.473.
Age-related declines in verbal fluency among a large sample of older adults were investigated. Background variables, verbal knowledge, and speed of processing were examined as predictors of verbal fluency and as mediators of age effects. As expected, age-related declines were greater on the excluded letter fluency task than on the initial letter fluency task. Verbal knowledge was a better predictor of initial letter fluency than speed of processing, whereas the reverse was true for excluded letter fluency. However, speed of processing accounted for more of the age-related variance in both fluency measures than the other predictors. There was no evidence of verbal knowledge compensating for age-related declines in verbal fluency. Results suggest that verbal fluency performance is well maintained in late life and that any age-related decline appears to be mainly due to declines in speed of information processing.
对大量老年人样本中与年龄相关的语言流畅性下降进行了调查。研究了背景变量、语言知识和加工速度，将其作为语言流畅性的预测指标以及年龄效应的中介变量。正如预期的那样，在排除字母流畅性任务中，与年龄相关的下降比在首字母流畅性任务中更大。对于首字母流畅性，语言知识比加工速度是更好的预测指标，而对于排除字母流畅性则相反。然而，在两种流畅性测量中，加工速度比其他预测指标解释了更多与年龄相关的方差。没有证据表明语言知识能弥补与年龄相关的语言流畅性下降。结果表明，语言流畅性在晚年保持良好，任何与年龄相关的下降似乎主要是由于信息加工速度的下降。
