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. Althou gh the two groups did not differ significantly on VIQ, the elderly gro up named significantly fewer of the objects than the younger group (wh o were almost at ceiling). A regression analysis of the data from the elderly group found effects of both age of acquisition and name agreem ent on naming accuracy after 5 and 15 s and an effect of word length a fter 5 but not 15 s. There were no independent effects of picture comp lexity, object familiarity, word frequency, or imageability. The major ity of the elderly subjects' naming errors were semantic in nature, wi th circumlocutions, visual errors, and ''don't know'' responses accoun ting for most of the remaining errors. The implications of the finding s for our understanding of word-finding problems in the elderly are di scussed, (C) 1998 Academic Press.