Ithaca College

Drs. Yvonne Rogalski, Ithaca College Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, Jonathan Peelle, University of Cambridge Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, and Jamie Reilly, University of Florida, have published a research paper in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research entitled: Effects of Perceptual and Contextual Enrichment on Visual Confrontation Naming in Adult Aging.

The study examined the effects of adding color and contextual information (environmental scenes) to line drawings on older adults’ naming speed and accuracy. Twenty young and 23 older adults named pictures from the Boston Naming Test under three conditions: black-and-white, colored, and scene-primed (picture of a hammock preceded by picture of a backyard). Results indicated that older adults did not benefit from either the colorized or scene-primed pictures but were slower overall to initiate naming under all three conditions. This finding is generally consistent with a theory of age-related declines in processing speed.

A link to the abstract can be found at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21498581

Funding was provided by a National Institutes of Health grant.