The lexical–semantic organization of the mental lexicon is bound to change across the lifespan. Nevertheless, the effects of lexical–semantic factors on word processing are usually based on studies enrolling young adult cohorts. The current study aims to investigate to what extent age‐specific semantic organization predicts performance in referential word production over the lifespan, from school‐age children to older adults. In Study 1, we conducted a free semantic association task with participants from six age‐groups (ranging from 10 to 80 years old) to compute measures that capture age‐specific properties of the mental lexicon across the lifespan. These measures relate to lifespan changes in the Available Richness of the mental lexicon and in the lexical–semantic Network Prototypicality of concrete words. In Study 2, we used the collected data to predict performance in a picture‐naming task on a new group of participants within the same age‐groups as for Study 1. The results show that age‐specific semantic Available Richness and Network Prototypicality affect word production speed while the semantic variables collected only in young adults do not. A richer and more prototypical semantic network across subjects from a given age‐group is associated with faster word production speed. The current results indicate that age‐specific semantic organization is crucial to predict lexical–semantic behaviors across the lifespan. Similarly, these results also provide cues to the understanding of the lexical–semantic properties of the mental lexicon and to lexical selection in referential tasks.

中文翻译：

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词法-语义网络对词产生的年龄特异性影响

心理词典的词汇-语义组织必然会在整个生命周期中发生变化。然而，词汇语义因素对文字处理的影响通常基于招募年轻成人群体的研究。目前的研究旨在调查在多大程度上具有年龄特异性语义组织可预测从学龄儿童到老年人的整个生命周期中参考词产生的表现。在研究 1 中，我们对来自六个年龄组（从 10 岁到 80 岁）的参与者进行了一项免费的语义关联任务，以计算在整个生命周期中捕捉心理词汇特定年龄属性的度量。这些措施与心理词典的可用丰富度和具体词的词汇语义网络原型的寿命变化有关。在研究2中，我们使用所收集的数据来预测在同一年龄组为研究1中的新组参与者在图片命名任务执行结果表明，特定年龄语义可用丰富度和网络原型影响单词生成速度，而仅在年轻人中收集的语义变量不会。跨给定年龄组的主题的更丰富、更原型的语义网络与更快的单词生成速度相关。目前的结果表明，特定年龄的语义组织对于预测整个生命周期的词汇语义行为至关重要。同样，这些结果也为理解心理词汇的词汇语义属性和指称任务中的词汇选择提供了线索。