title: Age-related changes in sentence production abilities and their relation to working-memory capacity: evidence from a verb-final language.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This study investigated the best predictor to capture age-related changes in passive-sentence production using a constrained sentence-production paradigm and explored the role of working-memory capacity in relation to the task demands of the sentence-production tasks.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 60 participants participated in the study ranging in age from 21 to 86. All were administered a syntactic-priming and a sentence-completion task under either canonical or noncanonical word-order conditions.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Age was significantly and negatively correlated with sentence-production tasks, and the most demanding condition with a noncanonical word order under the syntactic priming paradigm was the best predictor of aging. Working-memory capacity was significantly and positively correlated with all conditions, but the significant correlation remained only for the most demanding condition (the priming task with a noncanonical word order) after controlling for age.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Sentence-production abilities were vulnerable to aging, and these effects manifested most clearly when the task demands were high enough to tax individuals' cognitive capacity. Working-memory capacity partially accounted for age-related changes in sentence-production abilities.
authors: Department of Communication Disorders, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea.
authors: Jee Eun
authors: JE
authors: Sung
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D008875:Middle Aged; D012044:Regression Analysis; D055815:Young Adult