ABSTRACT
The ability to communicate is essential if older adults are to solicit assistance with daily living activities; fulfill life-long learning goals; gain access to health and legal information from print, broadcast, or electronic media; or enjoy intergenerational contacts with family members. Older adults need to communicate with their families, friends, neighbors, lawyers, and physicians through face-to-face interaction and over the Internet. Older adults’ ability to communicate can be compromised by a variety of sensory impairments such as presbyopia and presbycusus as well as by other, more subtle impairments such as limitations of working-memory capacity, processing speed, and inhibitory control. As a result, some aspects of language processing are particularly vulnerable to the effects of aging. These vulnerabilities arise from the interplay of serial and hierarchical aspects of language within a limited capacity processing system.
