title: The time course of automatic lexical access and aging.
abstract: This study addresses the issue of cognitive slowing in the elderly by examining the time course of automatic lexical access. College-aged subjects typically show a brief rise time (300-500 msec) for lexical access. In the present study, we examine whether there are changes in rapid, automatized access routines with age. Elderly and college-aged subjects performed a lexical decision task wherein semantically related words embedded in a continuous list were presented one at a time with a varying (300-1500 msec) inter-word interval. The use of a continuous list, a repeated word, and a very short inter-stimulus interval allowed automatic lexical access to be straightforwardly examined. The elderly subjects showed an onset of automatic lexical access that was similar in time frame to that for college-age subjects. These findings suggest that wherever the locus of age-related slowing may be, it is not in the early, language-specific processing devices that mediate lexical access.
authors.affiliation: Aphasia Research Center, Boston University School of Medicine, MA.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Stern
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Prather
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Swinney
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Zurif
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning; D011930:Reaction Time