NAMING ABILITY ACROSS THE ADULT LIFE-SPAN

Longitudinal performance on the Boston Naming Test (BNT) was evaluated in 53 normal subjects aged 30 to 79 who were each tested three times over a 7-year span. Naming performance showed a significant decline ov er time that was greatest for the oldest subjects. These results confi rm that decline in naming is a real phenomenon in normal aging that ca nnot be attributable primarily to cohort effects. We conclude that the changes in naming ability across the life span reflect more than simp ly a breakdown in lexical retrieval and that perceptual and semantic p rocessing may be implicated.