Microlinguistic processes that contribute to the ability to relay main events: influence of age

The purpose of the current study was to determine the microlinguistic processes that contribute to picture description in healthy adults across the life span. Two-hundred forty healthy adults were separated into three groups, young (n = 80; 20-39), middle (n = 80; 40-69), and older (n = 80; 70-89). Participants provided language samples in response to two single and two sequential pictures analyzed for total number of words, informativeness, lexical diversity, syntactic complexity, and main events. The older group produced a significantly lower proportion of main events for the single and sequential pictures compared to the other groups. Group differences on the microlinguistic measures varied depending on the measure and the stimulus type. Further, regardless of task, total number of words significantly related to main event production for the young and middle aged groups, but not the older group. Results of the current study extend previous findings by researchers who have investigated discourse production in cognitively healthy, older adults. Using a multi-level approach, we found that linguistic processes across different levels interact; however, the relationship is age-dependent. By including a middle-aged group we identify the potential course of documented change and our results indicate that the changes in language processes with age may not be linear.