Lexical knowledge and lexical-retrieval in aging: Insights from a tip-of-the- tongue (TOT) study.

Elderly people experience more failures in word form access (tip-of-the-tongue
events, ‘TOTs’) than young people. There is general agreement that TOTs are
signs of cognitive decline in older people, but because of the diversity and
ambiguity involved in measuring TOTs, certain questions regarding age-related
trends in semantic access remain unsolved. Age-related increases in vocabulary
may raise the level of efficiency of access to semantic representations and
compensate for lexical access failures. We explore the relationships between
lexical knowledge and lexical retrieval in ageing by re-examining the data
obtained by Juncos-Rabada´n et al. on TOTs induced in 140 volunteers aged
from 19 to 82 years. We found that older adults displayed significantly more
difficulty in accessing the phonological representations of personal names, but
not those of common nouns. The results revealed greater semantic access
efficiency in older participants. We discuss the findings in light of the
transmission deficit theory of TOT production.