Healthy Aging and Compensation of Sentence Comprehension Auditory Deficits

To analyze the effect of aging on sentence auditory comprehension and to study the relationship between this language skill and cognitive functions (attention, working memory, and executive functions).

A total of 90 healthy subjects were divided into three groups: adults (50-59 years), young-old (60-69 years), and old-old (70-80 years). Subjects were assessed using the Revised Token Test. The measures used for performance analysis were number of correct answers (accuracy) and execution time of commands on the different subtests.

Regarding accuracy, groups showed similar performance on the first blocks, but the young-old and old-old performed worse than adults on blocks 9 and 10. With respect to execution time, groups differed from block 2 (i.e., the groups differed for all blocks, except for block 1), with the worst performance observed in the old-old group, followed by that of the young-old group. Therefore, the elderly required more time to attain performance similar to that of adults, showing that time measurements are more sensitive for detecting the effects of age. Sentence comprehension ability is correlated with cognitive test performance, especially for global cognition and working memory tests.

Healthy aging is characterized by the ability to compensate for difficulties in linguistic processing, which allows the elderly to maintain functional communication.