# MEMORY AND LANGUAGE IN OLD AGE

> **NIH NIH R01** · POMONA COLLEGE · 1991 · $90,498

## Abstract

Older adults complain that deficits in retrieving well known words
increase dramatically in old age and become an irksome problem.
Research confirms that certain aspects of language production are
impaired in old age, namely, word retrieval in fluent speech, in
naming objects or people, and in producing words corresponding to
definitions.  Older adults "know" these words but are unable to
retrieve them.  In contrast, older adults show little decline in
retrieval of meaning during word comprehension.  The goal of the
proposed research is to investigate cognitive operations that are
essential for word retrieval in order to increase our understanding
of age-related retrieval deficits.  The research examines
activation processes involved in the retrieval of semantic and
phonological information, and determines whether those processes
involved in production are impaired in old age, whereas those
involved in comprehension are spared.  Thus we are concerned with
cognitive operations that underlie the production and comprehension
of language in everyday life.

Experiments 1-4 are designed to determine whether there are age-
related deficits in activation of phonological information, but not
semantic information, and whether these deficits occur in
processing pictures, but not words.  Experiments 5-6 investigate
whether older adults are impaired, relative to younger adults, in
naming objects with low familiarity names, but not in retrieving
semantic information about these objects.  Experiments 7-10 induce
tip of the tongue states in order to determine if during these word
retrieval failures, activation of the target word is reduced for
old relative to young adults.  Experiments 11-12 examine whether
older adults are impaired in retrieving proper names of famous
people, but not in retrieving other types of information, such as
occupation.  The effect of recent processing of the name on this
impairment is examined.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 3120600
- **Project number:** 5R01AG008835-02
- **Recipient organization:** POMONA COLLEGE
- **SAM.gov UEI:** Q9VBQSV2CBY5
- **Principal Investigator:** Deborah M Burke
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 1991
- **Award amount:** $90,498
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 1990-02-01 → 1992-11-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/3120600

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 3120600, MEMORY AND LANGUAGE IN OLD AGE (5R01AG008835-02). Retrieved via MORVS 2026-10-25 from https://api.morvs.ai/grant/nih/3120600. Licensed CC0.

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