A multidimensional scaling analysis of aging and the semantic structure of animal names

Adult age differences in semantic structure were investigated using nonmetric individual differences multidimensional scaling. Similarity judgments of all possible pairs of 16 animal names were obtained from 20 adults in each of the following six age ranges: 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79. The overall scaling solution revealed a semantic space consisting of the features of size and predativity. Comparisons of the age groups revealed a small but statistically significant tendency for participants in the two oldest groups to emphasize the concrete dimension of size, in contrast with the middle-aged groups who emphasized the abstract dimension of predativity. This abstract-to-concrete trend of adult age differences is compared with the concrete-to-abstract trend for this same semantic domain which has been observed previously among young children.