Language in Aged Persons

The ability to understand and remember language depends on a coordinated array of processing components that translate an orthographic or acoustic signal into meaning. Language production is similarly multifaceted, requiring message formulation from which a surface form is constructed. Aging brings both growth (e.g., knowledge) and decline (e.g., speed of processing) in computational capacity, resulting in a variety of changes in both of these aspects of language processing. Evidence for these changes can be found in behavioral data, event-related potentials, and imaging.