Abstract:

Studies in aging of speech production from the aspects of behavioral and neural mechanisms are reviewed. We summarize that how the variable of age affects speech production, and mainly focus on the phenomena of the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT), homophone picture naming, homophone priming effect and the interaction between the variable of age and linguistic features such as AoA, frequencies of target names or participants’ characteristics (i.e., bilinguals). The findings indicate that the older presents deficits during phonological encoding in speech production. The theories of aging in speech production are introduced in details: Insufficient Activation Hypothesis (IAH), Transmission Deficits Hypothesis (TDH), and Inhibitory Deficit Hypothesis (IDH). In recent years, neurocognitive study has seen a major change by fMRI and ERP technologies, which provides the spatial and temporal neurocognitive signatures for aging of speech production. Finally, we propose the main questions from the perspectives of aging and speech production studies.

Key words: speech production, aging, Insufficient Activation Hypothesis (IAH), Transmission Deficits Hypothesis (TDH), Inhibitory Deficit Hypothesis (IDH)