Spontaneous Language Production and Aging: Sex and Educational Effects

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Abstract
Sex and educational level effects on spontaneous language production at different ages were analyzed in a 180-normal subject sample taken from the general population. Subjects were divided into groups according to three variables: (1) age (16–30, 31–50, and 51–65 years), (2) educational level (3–7, 8–12 and more than 12 years of formal educational), and (3) sex (males and females) with 10 subjects in each cell. The oral description of the Plate # 1 (“The Cookie Theft”)from the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (Goodglass & Kaplan, 1972) was selected. Number of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and grammatical connectors were scored for each subject picture description. It was concluded that: (1) the ratio among different phrase elements was very uniform across age, educational level and sex groups; (2) the total number of words used to describe the “The Cookie Theft” picture significantly increased with the subject's educational level; (3) the amount of spontaneous language in general decreased with age; however, a significant interaction-effect between age and sex was observed. A steady and pronounced spontaneous language decrease across age-groups was observed in males. However, only mild differences across age-groups were observed in female subjects. It was hypothetized that language changes during aging are strongly sex-dependent: while in men spontaneous language rapidly decreases with aging, in women spontaneous language production remains quite well-preserved.