EFFECTS OF AGING ON THE PRODUCTION OF RUSSIAN

Two studies compared young and older adults' production of complex syn tactic structures in Russian, a morphologically rich language with fre e word order. A variety of measures of content, fluency, clause struct ure, and grammatical form were assessed from oral language samples col lected from young adult Russians visiting the United States, from olde r adults who had recently emigrated to the United States from Russia, and from young and older Russians living in Moscow, Russia. Content an d fluency in Russian were associated with Russian vocabulary knowledge and influenced by educational level and knowledge of English and othe r languages. The production of grammatical forms, including clause str ucture and word order variation, was associated with digit span, sugge sting that working memory limitations affect the use of clause and wor d order variations in Russian.