Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Theories of information processing and theories of aging
- 2 Effects of aging on verbal abilities: Examination of the psychometric literature
- 3 Aging and individual differences in memory for written discourse
- 4 Geriatric psycholinguistics: Syntactic limitations of oral and written language
- 5 Aging and memory activation: The priming of semantic and episodic memories
- 6 Automatic and effortful semantic processes in old age: Experimental and naturalistic approaches
- 7 Integrating information from discourse: Do older adults show deficits?
- 8 Comprehension of pragmatic implications in young and older adults
- 9 Capacity theory and the processing of inferences
- 10 Age differences in memory for texts: Production deficiency or processing limitations?
- 11 Episodic memory and knowledge interactions across adulthood
- 12 The disorder of naming in Alzheimer's disease
- 13 Language and memory processing in senile dementia Alzheimer's type
- 14 Patterns of language and memory in old age
- Author index
- Subject index
5 - Aging and memory activation: The priming of semantic and episodic memories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Theories of information processing and theories of aging
- 2 Effects of aging on verbal abilities: Examination of the psychometric literature
- 3 Aging and individual differences in memory for written discourse
- 4 Geriatric psycholinguistics: Syntactic limitations of oral and written language
- 5 Aging and memory activation: The priming of semantic and episodic memories
- 6 Automatic and effortful semantic processes in old age: Experimental and naturalistic approaches
- 7 Integrating information from discourse: Do older adults show deficits?
- 8 Comprehension of pragmatic implications in young and older adults
- 9 Capacity theory and the processing of inferences
- 10 Age differences in memory for texts: Production deficiency or processing limitations?
- 11 Episodic memory and knowledge interactions across adulthood
- 12 The disorder of naming in Alzheimer's disease
- 13 Language and memory processing in senile dementia Alzheimer's type
- 14 Patterns of language and memory in old age
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
According to their own reports and to clinical and laboratory tests, as people grow older they often experience difficulties in understanding and remembering spoken and written language. Some of these communication problems are due to sensory deficits, but some complaints that are attributed to sensory loss are likely due to cognitive deficits. Even when people of different ages are equated on peripheral sensory loss (via an audiometric examination), elderly people are still poorer than the young at identifying spoken speech (Hayes, 1981). Furthermore, self-assessments of hearing impairment are not predicted well by the degree of peripheral hearing loss. For example, Weinstein and Ventry (1983) found that an audiometric evaluation accounted for less than 50% of the variance in self-assessed hearing handicap. This discrepancy may be due in part to the fact that the self-assessment of hearing handicap is sensitive to cognitive difficulties, whereas the audiometric evaluation is not. One of the goals of this chapter is to suggest specific cognitive deficits that might underlie these age-related communication difficulties.
Despite the increase in communication and memory problems, normal aging does not bring with it a complete deterioration of memory and language. The losses, although annoying and sometimes frightening, are only rarely debilitating. Therefore, clinicians and researchers need to determine not only what is lost, but also what is saved. Differentiating age-sensitive from age-constant components of cognition provides a more accurate theoretical account of cognitive aging.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Language, Memory, and Aging , pp. 77 - 99Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988
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