Last in, first to go: age of acquisition and naming in the elderly

Twenty-six elderly subjects (ages 71-86) and 10 young adult subjects (ages 22-33) named 206 black-and-white line drawings of objects. Although the two groups did not differ significantly on VIQ, the elderly group named significantly fewer of the objects than the younger group (who were almost at ceiling). A regression analysis of the data from the elderly group found effects of both age of acquisition and name agreement on naming accuracy after 5 and 15 s and an effect of word length after 5 but not 15 s. There were no independent effects of picture complexity, object familiarity, word frequency, or imageability. The majority of the elderly subjects' naming errors were semantic in nature, with circumlocutions, visual errors, and "don't know" responses accounting for most of the remaining errors. The implications of the findings for our understanding of word-finding problems in the elderly are discussed.