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Updated: May 26, 2026

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment
Published on: June 25, 2019
Age-related differences in word-retrieval but not in meaning generation
1Department of Education and Psychology, The Open University, The Dorothy de Rothschild Campus, Ra'anana, Israel. gkave@012.net.il
Abstract:
This study examines age-associated changes in retrieval on a picture-naming task, phonemic and semantic fluency tasks, and the Homophone Meaning Generation Test (HMGT). The sample included 152 Hebrew-speaking adults, half young (mean age 22.75) and half old (mean age 76.05). Groups differed on the picture-naming task and on both verbal fluency tasks, but not on the HMGT. Age explained a greater share of the variance than did education level on these three tests, whereas the opposite pattern of results was seen on the HMGT. We suggest that age-related word finding difficulties are attenuated when performance allows for semantic rather than phonological access.
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