Original Research

SAGE Open
April-June 2023: 1–11
Ó The Author(s) 2023
Word Retrieval After the 80s: Evidence DOI: 10.1177/21582440231178796
journals.sagepub.com/home/sgo
From Specific and Multiple Words
Naming Tasks

Carlos Rojas1 , Bernardo Riffo2, and Ernesto Guerra3

Abstract
Older adults show a progressive cognitive decline, and although language processing appears to resist advancing age, studies in
word retrieval report that elders show important difficulties. Previous research reports that such failures increase from age
70 years, which suggests that during the fourth age word retrieval would exhibit even stronger constraints. At the same time,
extant evidence suggests that only retrieval of a specific word might decline in advanced aging, and not the recovery of multiple
pieces associated with a given semantic category. However, those studies did not explicitly assess these phenomena in a group
of older adults in their fourth age, and thus cannot be considered conclusive with regards to this particular group. In the pres-
ent study, we examined word retrieval in three distinctive advanced age groups (60–69, 70–79, and 80 + years) in two pro-
duction tasks: a picture naming task, and a lexical availability task. We compared the fourth-age group against the other two
third-age group in their reaction time (RT) and accuracy as well as, on the lexical availability index (LAI) and total words
retrieved in a lexical availability task. Fourth-age group exhibited longer RT in the picture naming task, yet a high level of accu-
racy. They also showed a reduced number of retrieved words, as well as, a reduced LAI, relative to the control groups. We
discuss our results in the context of the decline of fluid intelligence, and the information transmission deficits hypothesis.

Keywords
aging, word retrieval, fourth age, picture naming, lexical availability

Introduction Gordon et al., 2018; Paesen & Leijten, 2019; Vogel-Eyny

Aging is characterized by functional and structural
changes (Baltes & Smith, 2003; Fletcher et al., 2018) that
affect several cognitive processes (Duncan et al., 2017;
Margrett et al., 2016; Mitchell et al., 2013). Thus, the
changes during old age shape different evolutionary
stages, such that today there seem to be two very marked
groups: third age (60–79 years old) and fourth age (.80
years; Baltes & Smith, 2003; Höpflinger, 2017). In this
last phase, cognitive decline is accentuated, compromis-
ing the cognitive performance of elderly people (Margrett
et al., 2016; Mitchell et al., 2013).
Although language processing appears to resist advan-
cing age, there is evidence that attrition may appear
around age 60 years, and it is dominated by a deteriora-
tion in production versus relative maintenance of com-
prehension (Abrams & Farrell, 2011; James & Goring,
2018; Pelle, 2019). At the lexical-semantic level, older
people show an early and progressive word retrieval defi-
cit (Abrams & Davis, 2016; Farrell & Abrams, 2011;
et al., 2016), accompanied by a moderate deficit in word
recognition that is accentuated only after age 80 (Ratcliff
et al., 2004; Rojas et al., 2022).
Studies in word naming report that older people show
significant difficulties in accessing proper names, labeling
a delivered definition, naming visually presented objects,
and consecutively naming words within a given semantic
category (Ferré et al., 2020; Gertel et al., 2020; Goral
et al., 2007; Macoir et al., 2018; Vogel-Eyny et al., 2016).
These failures appear most frequently from age 50 years
1
Department of Health Rehabilitation Sciences, Universidad del Bı́o-Bı́o,
Chile
2
Department of Spanish, Universidad de Concepción, Chile
3
Center for Advanced Research in Education, Institute of Education (IE),
Universidad de Chile, Chile
Corresponding Author:
Carlos Rojas, Department of Health Rehabilitation Sciences, Universidad
del Bı́o-Bı́o, Andrés Bello 720, Chillán, Ñuble, Chile.
Email: crojas@ubiobio.cl

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2 SAGE Open
and they increase in the middle stages of old age
(70 years about; Goral et al., 2007; Huijbers et al., 2017;
Verhaegen & Poncelet, 2013). Consequently, word retrie-
val deficits are a main and progressive linguistic diffi-
culty in old age (Davis, 2020; James & Goring, 2018;
Schmank & James, 2020).
Difficulties on word retrieval in old age is explained—
mainly—by the systematic weakening of connections
between lexical and phonological nodes, responsible for
cortical activation not being robust enough to achieve
information transfer, according to the transmission defi-
cit hypothesis (TDH; MacKay & Burke, 1990). Thus,
the progressive nature of this lower activation, coupled
with the multiple levels of processing involved in retriev-
ing a specific word (i.e., lexical, semantic, and phonologi-
cal; Abrams & Farrell, 2011), allow us to assume that in
very advanced stages of aging word naming tasks would
evidence strong access constraints, reflected in a signifi-
cant increase in response times (RT), higher number of
phonological blocks, and a reduction of the available lex-
icon. However, our knowledge on word retrieval in peo-
ple over 80 years old is still scarce; we do not know how
severe this deficit could be and what kind of tasks would
generate greater difficulties.
Assessing Word Production in Older Adults
Several studies using tasks that assess the retrieval of spe-
cific lexical items (i.e., picture naming) have shown a sys-
tematic increase in response times after age 60 years and
beyond compared to younger adults (Ferré et al., 2020;
Gertel et al., 2020; Macoir et al., 2018; Paesen & Leijten,
2019). This effect may be predictable, a product of the
decline in fluid intelligence and operating skills described
in the older people population (Cooley, 2020; Mitchell
et al., 2013). However, this slowing is usually compen-
sated by a good level of accuracy (Hoyau et al., 2017;
Riffo et al., 2020; Rojas et al., 2022). Such RT-accuracy
dissociation suggests that in the early stages of aging
there is compensatory mechanisms that allow a correct
recovery and act independently of the decline of fluid
intelligence (Ferré et al., 2020), and the increase of cogni-
tive reserve (Cooley, 2020; Wulff et al., 2016, 2019). It
remains unclear, however, whether this RT-accuracy dis-
sociation remains stable across the different stages of old
age, and whether word retrieval accuracy retains its good
performance after the age of 80 years.
In turn, studies using tasks that assess the retrieval of
multiple words associated with a given semantic category
or domain (lexical availability task) show that after age
60 years the available lexicon decreases, not because of a
lack of vocabulary, but due to difficulties in retrieving
the lemmas associated with the semantic category evalu-
ated (Goral et al., 2007; Vogel-Eyny et al., 2016). The
reduction of the available lexicon and the stabilization of
a varied vocabulary (Horton et al., 2010) described in
early old age appear, at first glance, contradictory.
However, poor performance in lexical availability tasks
is largely due to the slower speed of lexical retrieval, as
well as on the reduction of compensatory strategies (i.e.,
fluid intelligence and information operation skills) that
support lexicalization and phonological encoding pro-
cesses. These abilities decline rapidly from the intermedi-
ate phase of aging onwards (Gordon et al., 2018) and we
predict that they should decline further in individuals
over 80 years old, as a consequence of generalized cogni-
tive decline (Baltes & Smith, 2003; Margrett et al., 2016;
Mitchell et al., 2013).
Goral et al. (2007) examined the effects of aging on
word production in a longitudinal study of 238 partici-
pants, ranging in age 30 to 94 years (mean age 61.7, with-
out differentiating between third and fourth age) using
both, picture naming and multiple retrieval task. The
authors predicted that if lemma selection happens before
lexeme activation (serial model; Schriefers et al., 1990)
retrieval deficits would be reflected in both tasks, as
words would require to be selected and subsequently
encoded, one at a time, causing constant blocking. By
contrast, if lemma selection is simultaneous with lexeme
activation (cascade model; Peterson & Savoy, 1998), poor
performance should be observed in the picture naming
retrieval task (Verhaegen & Poncelet, 2013), but not in
the multiple retrieval task. As a result, the picture naming
task exhibited a marked reduction in lexical retrieval from
intermediate stages of old age. The multiple retrieval
methods, on the other hand, exhibited a gradual decline
throughout aging, with no evidence of a marked accelera-
tion in the late stage. The authors conclude that the defi-
cit in lexical retrieval of specific words could be explained
by the TDH (MacKay & Burke, 1990). Performance in
the multiple retrieval task could be explained by the cas-
cade model (Peterson & Savoy, 1998) since the simulta-
neous activation between lemma and lexeme would allow
access to all available and pre-activated concepts for a
given semantic category (Goral et al., 2007).
The Present Study
According to the systematic weakening of connections
between lexical and phonological nodes, which would be
responsible for cortical activation not being robust
enough to achieve information transfer (TDH; MacKay
& Burke, 1990) and the decline of fluid intelligence in the
advanced aging (Margrett et al., 2016; Rojas et al., 2022),
the differences between a picture naming and a lexical
availability task in older adults after 80 years old should
be minimal. However, evidence of Goral et al. (2007)
showed a significant reduction in specific lexical retrieval
Rojas et al.
and a gradual decline throughout aging using multiple
retrieval methods. But Goral et al. (2007) did not sepa-
rate the sample into groups of third and fourth age or
reported the sample size of participants beyond 80 years
of age (i.e., fourth age). Thus, the relatively good perfor-
mance in the multiple retrieval task in an underspecified
sample of older adults could have obscured potential dif-
ferences in performance in the advanced age stage, rela-
tive to younger participants. Therefore, it is relevant to
assess how word retrieval progresses throughout aging
(particularly in advanced stages) using both methods, to
determine the effect of TDH during advanced aging, and
whether the cascade model continues to favor lexical
retrieval in the lexical availability task.
In addition, there are lexical variables that allow eas-
ier retrieval of certain words over others (i.e., high-
frequency words, lower syllable length, high imagery,
among others), whose effects have been extensively
reported in young people and early and middle stages of
old age, but not among the oldest old people. For exam-
ple, picture naming tasks show that high lexical fre-
quency words are retrieved in lower RT and obtain
higher accuracy (Paesen & Leijten, 2019; Brysbaert et al.,
2014). A similar case occurs with words of shorter sylla-
ble length. Cuetos et al. (2015) propose that these are
processed faster, since their phonological coding corre-
sponds to the linear relationship between their length
and the time needed to process them (Haberlandt &
Graesser, 1985), and they are also more common, which
facilitates their retrieval (Abrams & Davis, 2016; Abrams
& Farrell, 2011; Farrell & Abrams, 2011). On the other
hand, data on lexical availability show that semantic
categories more familiar to the individual (i.e., animals,
clothes) increase the lexical availability index (LAI) and
total words retrieval since they represent words of higher
frequency, typicality, and early acquisition (Hernández
& Izura, 2010). In this context, it is also interesting to
explore whether the effects of these factors (lexical fre-
quency, syllabic length, and semantic category type)
remain stable later 80 years of age, a stage in which cog-
nitive decline marks the evolution of this group.
In this study, we evaluated the effect of advanced
aging on two tasks: A picture naming task (from which
we obtain RTs and accuracy) and a lexical availability
test (from this we counted the LAI and the total retrieved
words). Also, we explore whether advanced aging main-
tains a stable effect on lexical frequency, syllable length,
and semantic category type. We predict that the progres-
sive nature of the transmission deficit between lexical and
phonological nodes (TDH) and the decline of fluid intel-
ligence will further affect words retrieval after the age of
80, which will negatively impact RT (picture naming
3
task), the LAI, and total words retrieval (lexical avail-
ability task). On the contrary, the maintenance of seman-
tic skills will allow an adequate conceptual performance.
Thus, we expect no differences in accuracy (picture nam-
ing) between early, intermediate and advanced stages of
aging.
Methods
Participants
A sample of 90 older adults participated voluntarily in
this study. It was divided into three groups of 30 individ-
uals according to the age of the participants. Group 1: 60
to 69 years (average age = 65.7 years, SD = 2.99; average
years of education = 13, SD = 1.23); group 2: 70 to
79 years (average age = 74.0 years, SD = 2.89; average
years of education = 13.1, SD = 1.81); and group 3: 80
to 92 (average age = 82.5 years, SD = 3.10; average
years of education = 13.03, SD = 1.71). Groups 1 and 2
represented the third age and group 3, the fourth age.
All older adults belonged to three local senior clubs
associated with the university. The following inclusion
criteria were established: 60 years of age or more, have
completed at least 8 years of schooling, self-report as
actively aging (mental, physical and social), have normal
(or corrected) hearing and vision, have urban residence,
and complete the experiments in a maximum period of
2 months. We also established the following exclusion
criteria: have a history of cerebrovascular disease, have a
diagnosis of neurodegenerative disease, have depression
or a psychiatric illness, and finally, presenting risk scores
on any of the following tests applied: Montreal
Cognitive Assessment (MoCA score of \21 points),
Yesavage Yesavage score of .11 points), or Boston
Reading Comprehension subtest score of \4 points.
Approximately 140 older individuals were invited to par-
ticipate. We established a sample size that could reach at
least 2,000 data per experiment. Of those interested in
participating, older adults who did not meet the inclu-
sion and/or exclusion criteria were excluded.
To participate in this study, all the older individuals
read and signed an informed consent, approved by the
Ethics Committee of the sponsoring University. The
objectives and details of the study were presented to the
authorities of each club. Then, older adults interested in
participating were assessed for cognitive (MoCA), emo-
tional (Yesavage), and basic reading comprehension
(Boston) performance. Finally, the selected older individ-
uals were invited to the University’s Specialty
Laboratory to perform the picture naming and lexical
access task.
4 SAGE Open
Materials and Design
Picture Naming Task
This task was implemented as a 2 3 3 design, including
images that combined the lexical frequency of use (lexical
frequency) of the target word (high/low) and its syllabic
length (bi/tri/tetrasyllabic). Lexical frequency was
checked through Spanish Lexical Database (www.bcbl.
eu/databases/espal/) and all selected words had an early
acquisition. Images were extracted from Shutterstock vir-
tual library (https://www.shutterstock.com). Only real
digital images were included, which were edited at a size
of 20 3 20 cm. To corroborate that the images faithfully
represented the target words, a normative study was con-
ducted with 20 older people (other than those selected
for the experiments). In this normative, the older adults
only had to write the name that best represented the
observed image. All images with an average of more
than 70% agreement with the expected response were
chosen for the final selection. The experiment contained
of 150 stimuli (Supplemental Appendix A). Specifically,
60 images representing high-frequency words and 60
images representing low lexical-frequency words were
presented, subdivided into 20 bisyllables, 20 trisyllables,
and 20 tetrasyllables, respectively. Finally, 30 filler trials
and 3 training trials were included.
Lexical Availability Task
We selected seven semantic categories derived from the
Panhispanic available lexicon project (López &
Stramburger, 1991), which, according to Urzúa (2018),
are weakened as people ages. These categories were
clothes, furniture, objects placed on the table at meal-
times, kitchen and its tools, the school, means of trans-
portation, and animals.
Procedure
The tasks were performed in an individual room, with
adequate lighting and soundproofing. In the picture
naming task, participants had to name each of the images
as quickly as possible and without making mistakes.
Stimuli were randomly presented on a 15.6$ computer
screen using E-Prime 3.0 program. Each trial started with
an asterisk in the middle of the screen for 1000 ms, fol-
lowed by the visual stimuli. Three practice trials were
given, before the actual materials were presented. The
oral response of the participants and the time at which it
occurred was registered, but if they did not respond after
10 seconds or more, the experimenter started the next
trial. The task consisted of three blocks, separated by a
short pause. The entire experiment lasted approximately
30 minutes.
For the lexical availability task, the older adults were
instructed to name all the concepts that were associated
with the proposed semantic category. The task was admi-
nistered in one block. We started with the instructions
and the training semantic category (colors), then each
semantic category was randomly presented. Each stimu-
lus presented a structure starting with a warning asterisk
in the middle of the display for 2000 ms, immediately this
instruction: ‘‘Name all the words you know related
to.’’, was displayed for 4000 ms. The semantic category
was then displayed for 2 minutes, while the spoken
responses were recorded. An alarm indicated that the
time had expired, accompanied by a 1000 ms ‘‘response
recorded’’ feedback. Subsequently, the next trial began.
We recorded all the answers given. The whole task took
16 to 18 minutes, approximately.
Data Analysis
Picture Naming Task Data
For the picture naming task, the total of correct/incorrect
stimuli was counted according to participants’ audio
recordings. Although if the response to the trial was a
product of involuntary activation of the vocal key, this
was considered invalid (5.23% of the task). Regarding the
RT of each stimulus, the criterion of Ratcliff et al. (2004)
was used, which consisted of excluding responses outside
the interval between 200 and 6,000 ms. To perform the
inferential analysis, the TR data were log-transformed to
approximate a normal distribution. Mixed-effects regres-
sion models (RT data) and generalized regression models
(accuracy data) were used for statistical analysis using R
software (R Core Team, 2020). Both regressions evaluate
the effects of three variables on the RT and accuracy: age
group (60–69/70–79/80 and older), lexical frequency (high/
low), and syllable length (bi/tri/tetrasyllabic). The regres-
sions incorporated interactions between fixed effects, ran-
dom intercepts by participants and by items, and random
slopes justified by the design. Considering that this study
focuses on people aged 80 years and older, we used this
group as the reference category (the intercept). Thus, we
assessed the effect of each predictor in this group (i.e., lexi-
cal frequency and syllable length) and compared it directly
with the third age groups.
Lexical Availability Task Data
For the lexical availability task, we unified and homoge-
nized participants’ responses using the following criteria:
(1) repeated words in the same semantic category were
eliminated at the participant levels; (2) plural noun or
adjective words were edited to their singular form, and
(3) any mispronounced words due to sociocultural var-
iants were corrected to their correct form. Data were
Rojas et al. 5

Table 1. Linear Mixed Model RT Results for Picture Naming Task.

Estimate SE t Pr(.|t|)

Intercept (fourth age) 7.092 0.078 91.206 .000***

Group 60–69 20.270 0.051 25.271 .000***
Group 70–79 20.122 0.050 22.429 .016*
Syllable length 0.072 0.024 3.050 .003**
Frequency 20.115 0.073 21.584 .116
Group 60–69: syllable length 20.005 0.012 20.453 .651
Group 70–79: syllable length 20.006 0.011 20.512 .609
Group 60–69: frequency 20.007 0.033 20.223 .824
Group 70–79: frequency 0.002 0.031 0.080 .936
Syllable length: frequency 0.028 0.023 1.185 .238
Group 60–69: syllable length: frequency 20.003 0.011 20.260 .795
Group 70–79: syllable length: frequency 20.006 0.010 20.616 .538

*p\.05. **p\.01. ***p\.001.

processed using the Dispogen 1.6 software (Echeverrı́a
et al., 2005), allowing us to calculate the LAI for each
word and the number of words produced per participant.
The LAI corresponds to the value given to an evoked
lexia, which ranges from 0 (no availability) to 1 (high
availability) after weighting its absolute frequency by the
order of occurrence (Urzúa, 2018). We selected only
those words that were present in all age groups (exclud-
ing non-repeated words), so that the word pairings
homogenized the comparison between groups and
semantic category.
Inferential analysis of the LAI data was carried out
using a linear mixed effects ‘‘beta’’ regression model (see
Brooks et al., 2017) suitable for proportion with bound-
aries 0 . and \1 (Ospina & Ferrari, 2012). The data of
total words retrieved were fitted using a Poisson regres-
sion model, since they correspond to count data. The
beta regression had age group and semantic category as
predictors, establishing the levels fourth age, and the
semantic category ‘‘kitchen and its utensils’’ as the inter-
cept. The latter, since we obtained the lowest LAI fre-
quency in that semantic category. This allowed us to
contrast that semantic category with the others, and the
participants in the 80 + years of age group the other
two groups of 60 to 69 and 70 to 79 years. In addition,
these models also included random intercepts by partici-
pant and item. The regression for the total number of
words retrieved incorporated the variables age group and
semantic category as predictors, establishing the overall
average of the advanced aging group (80 + years) and
the semantic category ‘‘animals’’ as the intercept, given
the higher frequency of words in this semantic category.
Results
In the picture naming task, the mixed linear regression
model (see Table 1) exhibited a main effect of the age
factor on RT. In particular, people in the fourth age
group obtained significantly higher RT than did group 1
(60–69 years; b = 2.270, SE = 0.051, t = 25.271, p
\ .00) and group 2 (70–79 years; b = 2.122,
SE = 0.050, t = 22.429, p = .016). Also, the fourth age
group showed main effects on syllable length, which
demonstrate facilitation for short-length words com-
pared to long-length words (syllable length: b = .072,
SE = 0.024, t = 3.050, p = .003), result of the high pho-
nological encoding cost generated by long words. As for
lexical frequency, no significant effects were observed for
the third and fourth ages, probably because during the
process of lexical retrieval the differences in RT among
high and low-frequency words were not so accentuated
(see Figure 1).
In addition, the generalized linear regression model
(see Table 2) exhibited that the level of accuracy of the
responses remains stable during aging, specifically, no
significant differences are observed between the accuracy
rates for initial (third-age) and advanced (fourth-age)
aging groups. However, in the fourth-age group we
visualize a main effect of lexical frequency (b = 1.515,
SE = 0.598, z = 2.534, p = .011) and syllable length
(b = 2.684, SE = 0.191, z = 23.584, p \ .00), which
confirms that the error rate grows significantly when
processing low-frequency and long-length words (see
Figure 1).
As for the results in the lexical availability task, linear
mixed-effects (Table 3) exhibit a main effect of aging on
LAI. Specifically, fourth-age adults present a signifi-
cantly lower LAI compared to both third-age groups
(group 60–69: b = .283, SE = 0.032, z = 8.754, p \ .000;
group 70–79: b = .103, SE = 0.033, z = 3.135, p = .002).
Also, the advanced aging group exhibits main effects for
the semantic categories: animals (b = .836, SE = 0.151,
z = 5.527, p \ .000), clothes (b = .757, SE = 0.170,
z = 4.452, p \ .000), furniture (b = 1.090, SE = 0.127,
6 SAGE Open

Figure 1. Mean log-transformed response time and accuracy (upper panel/lower panel) as a function of Age Group (80 + , vs. 60–69
and 70–79), Lexical Frequency (High vs. Low), and Syllable Length (bisyllabic vs. threesyllabic vs. tetrasyllabic). The error bars represent
within-subject adjusted standard error of the mean.

z = 8.577, p \ .000), and objects placed on the table at
mealtimes (b = 1.066, SE = 0.078, z = 13.739, p \ .000);
which showed a significantly higher LAI compared to
the semantic category kitchen and its utensils (compari-
son intercept), which exhibited lower lexical availability
in advanced aging (see Figure 2).
Furthermore, the generalized linear mixed-effects
regression (see Table 4) exhibited a main effect between
aging and the total number of words retrieved, specifi-
cally, the elders of fourth age retrieved significantly fewer
words compared to the older group 60 to 69 years old
(b = .183, SE = 0.071, z = 2.586, p = .010). However,
the same did not happen with the 70 to 79 years age
group, with which no significant differences were
observed (see Figure 2). Also, the advanced aging group
shows main effects for the semantic categories kitchen
and its utensils (b = 2.131, SE = 0.060, z = 22.189,
p = .029), objects placed on the table at mealtimes
(b = 2.209, SE = 0.061, z = 23.416, p = .001), furni-
ture (b = 2.494, SE = .067, z = 27.409, p \ .000), and
means of transportation (b = 2.331, SE = 0.063,
z = 25.214, p \ .000); which reflects that significantly
fewer words are retrieved in these semantic categories
compared to the semantic category animals (comparison
Rojas et al. 7

Table 2. Generalized Linear Mixed Model Accuracy Results for Picture Naming Task.

Estimate SE z Pr(.|z|)

Intercept (fourth age) 4.757 0.641 7.424 .000***

Group 60–69 0.782 0.533 1.467 .142
Group 70–79 0.436 0.498 0.874 .382
Syllable length 20.684 0.191 23.584 .000***
Frequency 1.515 0.598 2.534 .011*
Group 60–69: syllable length 20.085 0.131 20.651 .515
Group 70–79: syllable length 20.117 0.119 20.980 .327
Group 60–69: frequency 20.211 0.407 20.517 .605
Group 70–79: frequency 20.101 0.363 20.279 .780
Syllable length: frequency 20.288 0.188 21.530 .126
Group 60–69: Syllable length: frequency 0.094 0.121 0.772 .440
Group 70–79: Syllable length: frequency 0.020 0.109 0.187 .851

*p\.05. **p\.01. ***p\.001.

Table 3. Beta Regression Mixed-Effects Regression on LAI Results for Lexical Availability Task.

Estimate SE t Pr(.|z|)

Intercept (fourth age/kitchen) 23.161 0.103 230.591 .000***

Group 60–69 0.283 0.032 8.754 .000***
Group 70–79 0.103 0.033 3.135 .002**
Animals 0.836 0.151 5.527 .000***
Clothes 0.757 0.170 4.452 .000***
Furniture 1.090 0.127 8.577 .000***
School 0.231 0.123 1.878 .060
Objects placed on top o of the table. 1.066 0.078 13.739 .000***
Means of transportation 0.246 0.171 1.438 .150

*p\.05. **p\.01. ***p\.001.

intercept), which, in turn, facilitate word retrieval during
the fourth age.
Discussion
The purpose of this research was to verify how word
retrieval is affected in individuals aged 80 years and over
in a picture naming and lexical availability associated
with a given semantic category tasks. A significant
increase in the RT was observed to retrieve specific words
and a marked reduction in LAI when multiple words
were retrieved in the advanced aging group (fourth-age
group) compared to both third-age groups separately. In
addition, the advanced aging group retrieved fewer
words than the third age groups, although the difference
was significant only with the initial aging group (60–
69 years). On the other side, there was no difference in
accuracy in retrieving specific words between the initial
and advanced aging groups.
The results obtained in this study might be associated
with the known accentuated deficit in fluid intelligence in
the fourth age, which causes a generalized slowing of
cognitive tasks (Margrett et al., 2016), including in lexi-
cal access, and particularly in word retrieval. Such slow-
down, though, is compensated by an adequate precision
of the process, thanks to crystallized intelligence.
Although no specific fluid intelligence and crystallized
intelligence tests were taken in the study sample, the
asymmetric decline of these two types of intelligence is
well established in this population (Ferré et al., 2020, see
also Ratcliff et al., 2004). In general, a ‘‘normal asymme-
try’’ is described when crystallized intelligence tends to
compensate for fluid intelligence deficits.
Specifically, the age effect in the strong increase in RT
in this class of tasks would be justified because fourth-
age individuals ostensibly decrease their information
processing speed (Baltes & Smith, 2003; Mitchell et al.,
2013), continue to reduce their fluid intelligence skills
(Margrett et al., 2016; Rojas et al., 2022) and mainly
because they exhibit a significant weakening of neural
connections between lexical and phonological nodes,
which would be largely responsible for cortical activation
not being robust enough to achieve information transfer
(MacKay & Burke, 1990). Thus, the systematic nature of
8 SAGE Open

Figure 2. Mean LAI and the total number of words (upper panel/lower panel) as a function of Age Group (80 + , vs. 60–69 and 70–79)
and Semantic Category. The error bars represent within-subject adjusted standard error of the mean.

Table 4. Generalized Linear Mixed Model Total Words Results for Lexical Availability Task

Estimate SE z Pr(.|z|)

Intercept (fourth age/animals) 2.967 0.051 57.798 .000***

Group 60–69 0.183 0.071 2.586 .010**
Group 70–79 0.132 0.071 1.853 .064
Kitchen 20.131 0.060 22.189 .029*
School 20.110 0.060 21.851 .064
Objects placed on top o of the table. 20.209 0.061 23.416 .001***
Furniture 20.494 0.067 27.409 .000***
Clothes 20.057 0.059 20.973 .331
Means of transportation 20.331 0.063 25.214 .000***

*p\.05. **p\.01. ***p\.001.

Rojas et al.
these deficits during old age could explain why people
aged 80 years and older are slower in selecting specific
words from the mental lexicon and encoding them pho-
nologically, compared to early and intermediate aging
individuals.
Our data suggest that under healthy cognitive condi-
tions, people aged 80 years and older can present a good
conceptual performance retrieving words with a high
level of precision (Wulff et al., 2016). We assume that
this adequate performance is related to the maintenance
of semantic skills along aging (Cooley, 2020; Riffo et al.,
2020; Wulff et al., 2016, 2019), skills that would function
independently of the speed at which the lexicon is
accessed. Thus, the results obtained confirm that, inde-
pendently of the cognitive variations inherent in
advanced aging, responsible for the marked difference
between the decline of specific abilities and the mainte-
nance of others (Tucker et al., 2019), the vocabulary and
lexical knowledge (crystallized intelligence, Cooley, 2020;
Wulff et al., 2016, 2019) remain stable. This validates the
idea that the difficulties of retrieval of specific words
would lie in the selection and/or phonological encoding
of lexical items (Verhaegen & Poncelet, 2013) and not in
the knowledge of them, which allows us to ensure that
the RT-accuracy dissociation (Ferré et al., 2020) remains
stable until very advanced stages of the aging process.
On the other hand, the results from the lexical avail-
ability task show that people aged 80 years and older,
not only present significant difficulties when they must
retrieve a specific word, but also when they must retrieve
multiple words associated with a given semantic cate-
gory, which is consistent with the progressive decline in
lexical access and word retrieval that have been described
in early and middle stages of old age (Abrams & Davis,
2016; Gertel et al., 2020; Ouyang et al., 2020; Vogel-
Eyny et al., 2016). Our findings indicate that the lexical
access deficits that increase during fourth age affect word
retrieval indistinctly, independent of the method applied
for its evaluation. We infer that the generalized decline in
cognitive processing during advanced aging, the progres-
sive slowing and the accentuated deficit in fluid intelli-
gence (Baltes & Smith, 2003; Mitchell et al., 2013) could
justify, in part, the strong difficulty in retrieving multiple
words associated with a given semantic category in peo-
ple of the fourth age.
Goral et al.’s (2007) research showed that word retrie-
val deficits during advanced aging increase mainly when
specific lexical items are retrieved and not when multiple
words are retrieved. In contrast, our evidence shows that
these difficulties are independent of the task applied.
Everything seems to indicate that deficits in fluid intelli-
gence, information processing speed and especially the
TDH (MacKay & Burke, 1990), increase strongly after
9
the age of 80, which further impairs lexical selection and
phonological encoding skills. This also allows us to
assume that regardless of the semantic activation model
that explains the word retrieval deficit in old age (serial
of Schriefers et al., 1990; or cascade of Peterson & Savoy,
1998), during the fourth age there would be a generalized
restriction to access a certain word or to access all the
concepts that the person knows for the semantic category
evaluated, which directly impacts on the increase of the
RT and the decrease of the lexical available indexes.
Nevertheless, words retrieval deficits in advanced aging
were accompanied by an excellent accuracy of the pro-
cess, which allows us to suggest that after the age of
80 years certain compensatory or adaptive mechanisms
continue to operate that allow correct retrieval and act
independently of cognitive decline (Ferré et al., 2020),
such as the maintenance of semantic abilities and the
increase of cognitive reserve (Cooley, 2020; Wulff et al.,
2016).
Conclusion
The present research contributes to a better understand-
ing of lexical access behavior and specifically word retrie-
val during the more advanced stage of aging. The applied
tasks exhibited that people aged 80 years and over exhibit
a marked deterioration in the ability to retrieve a specific
word or multiple words associated with a given semantic
category. Specifically, the RT increases significantly
when specific lexical items are retrieved, and in addition
the LAI and total words retrieved are also reduced when
multiple words are retrieved. Although, in parallel, a high
level of response accuracy was observed in the specific
retrieval task, similar to what was observed in both
elders’ groups. Our findings are consistent with the data
supporting that during aging the deterioration of fluid
intelligence, information processing speed and the reduc-
tion of neural connections and transmission between lexi-
cal and phonological nodes, decreases the skill to retrieve
words from the mental lexicon, deficits that according to
our results become more acute after the age of 80 years,
impacting equally the lexical retrieval of specific and mul-
tiple words. On the contrary, the preservation of the crys-
tallized intelligence improves the accuracy of lexical
access, which could be responsible for maintaining to
some extent linguistic functionality during advanced
aging. Our findings should be considered basic evidence
on word retrieval in oldest old people. Future studies
should delve deeper into the physiological aspects of lexi-
cal access described in this research, thus increasing the
knowledge of how people aged 80 years and older mani-
fest their cognitive-linguistic changes.
10
Author Contributions
CR: conceptualization, methodology, data curation, data anal-
ysis, original draft preparation, and writing—reviewing and
editing. BR: methodology, data analysis, original draft prepara-
tion, and writing—reviewing and editing. EG: software, data
curation, data analysis, visualization, original draft prepara-
tion, and writing—reviewing and editing.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial sup-
port for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article: This work was supported by the National Research and
Development Agency (ANID) Fondecyt Iniciación 11230984
(CR); Fondecyt Regular 1211754 (BR); and by the Vice
Rectory Office for Research and Development, Universidad de
Chile, through the PROA001/19 research grant (EG). Funding
from ANID/PIA/Basal Funds for Centers of Excellence Project
FB0003 was also gratefully acknowledged (EG).
Consent to Participate
The share study was approved by the University’s Ethics,
Bioethics and Biosafety Committee. All participants provided
written informed consent.
ORCID iDs
Carlos Rojas https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2889-3982
Ernesto Guerra https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7403-5271
Data Availability
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be
made available by the authors, without undue reservation.
Supplemental Material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.
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