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Updated: Jan 22, 2026

Perspectives on Neuroscience
Published on: July 31, 2007
New Perspectives on the Aging Lexicon
Dirk U Wulff1, Simon De Deyne2, Michael N Jones3
1University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland; Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany.
Abstract:
The field of cognitive aging has seen considerable advances in describing the linguistic and semantic changes that happen during the adult life span to uncover the structure of the mental lexicon (i.e., the mental repository of lexical and conceptual representations). Nevertheless, there is still debate concerning the sources of these changes, including the role of environmental exposure and several cognitive mechanisms associated with learning, representation, and retrieval of information. We review the current status of research in this field and outline a framework that promises to assess the contribution of both ecological and psychological aspects to the aging lexicon.
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