The structure of verbal abilities in young and older adults

Four language sample measures as well as measures of vocabulary. verbal flu ency, and memory span were obtained from a sample of young adults and a sam ple of older adults. Factor analysis was used to analyze the structure of t he vocabulary, fluency, and span measures for each age group. Then an "exte nsion" analysis was performed by using structural modeling techniques to de termine how the language sample measures were related to the other measures . The measure of grammatical complexity was associated with measures of wor king memory including reading span and digit span. Two measures, sentence l ength in words and a measure of lexical diversity, were associated with the vocabulary measures. The fourth measure, propositional density, was associ ated with the fluency measures as a measure of processing efficiency. The s tructure of verbal abilities in young and older adults is somewhat differen t. suggesting age differences in processing efficiency.