Lexical-processing declines are a hallmark of aging. However, the extent of these declines may vary as a function of different factors. Motivated by findings from neurodegenerative diseases and healthy aging, we tested whether 'motor-relatedness' (the degree to which words are associated with particular human body movements) might moderate such declines. We investigated this question by examining data from three experiments. The experiments were carried out in different languages (Dutch, German, English) using different tasks (lexical decision, picture naming), and probed verbs and nouns, in all cases controlling for potentially confounding variables (e.g., frequency, age-of-acquisition, imageability). Whereas 'non-motor words' (e.g., steak) showed age-related performance decreases in all three experiments, 'motor words' (e.g., knife) yielded either smaller decreases (in one experiment) or no decreases (in two experiments). The findings suggest that motor-relatedness can attenuate or even prevent age-related lexical declines, perhaps due to the relative sparing of neural circuitry underlying such words.

中文翻译：

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衰老对牛排的影响大于刀具：证据表明，与运动技能相关的词语的处理在衰老过程中相对较少。

词汇处理能力下降是衰老的标志。然而，这些下降的程度可能因不同因素而异。受神经退行性疾病和健康老龄化的研究结果的启发，我们测试了“运动相关性”（词语与特定人体运动的关联程度）是否会缓和这种下降。我们通过检查来自三个实验的数据来研究这个问题。实验使用不同的语言（荷兰语、德语、英语）进行，使用不同的任务（词汇决定、图片命名），并探究动词和名词，在所有情况下都控制了潜在的混杂变量（例如，频率、获得年龄，成像能力）。而“非运动词”（例如牛排）在所有三个实验中都显示出与年龄相关的表现下降，“运动词”（例如。g.，刀）产生较小的下降（在一个实验中）或没有下降（在两个实验中）。研究结果表明，运动相关性可以减弱甚至防止与年龄相关的词汇下降，这可能是由于这些词背后的神经回路相对保留。