30.04.2024 - Marina Laganaro

Speaking involves selecting and producing about 150 words per minute, at least in young adult speakers, but speed of word selection and production follows a U-shaped/bell-shaped curve from childhood to ageing adults. After introducing the current state of the art on the brain dynamics of the mechanisms underlying referential and inferential word production in typical young adults (de Zubicaray & Piai, 2019; Indefrey, 2011; Laganaro, 2023), I will discuss the changes underlying language and speech production across the lifespan. In particular, based on behavioral and EEG/ERP studies involving school-age children, adolescents and different adult age groups, I will show that (1) word production processes become adult-like only in adolescence both at the level of lexical selection (Atanasova et al, 2021;2022) and of motor speech processes (Lancheros et al., 2023), and (2) neurophysiological modifications precede the behavioral decline in word production in older adults (Krethlow et al., 2024), in line with the interpretation that the lexical-semantic reorganization in mid-adulthood influences the maintenance of language skills longer than for other cognitive functions.

Atanasova, T., Fargier, R. Zesiger, P., Laganaro, M. (2021). Dynamics of Word Production in the Transition from Adolescence to Adulthood. Neurobiology of Language. 2 (1),  1–21.  DOI 10.1162/nol_a_00024

Atanasova, T., Laganaro, M. (2022). Word production changes through adolescence: a behavioral and ERP investigation of referential and inferential naming. Developmental Neuropsychology, 47(6), 295-313. https://doi.org/10.1080/87565641.2022.2112195

de Zubicaray, G. I., & Piai, V. (2019). Investigating the spatial and temporal components of speech production. In The Oxford handbook of neurolinguistics (pp. 471–497). Oxford University Press.

Indefrey, P. (2011). The spatial and temporal signatures of word production components: A critical update. Language Sciences, 2, 255. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00255

Krethlow, G., Fargier, R., Atanasova, T., Menetre, E., Laganaro, M. (2024). Asynchronous Behavioral and Neurophysiological Changes in Word Production in the Adult Lifespan. Cerebral Cortex. In press.

Laganaro, M. (2023). Time-course of phonetic (motor speech) encoding in utterance production. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1080/02643294.2023.2279739

Lancheros, M., Friedriechs, D., & Laganaro, M. (2023). What do differences between alternating and sequential diadochokinetic tasks tell us about the speech motor control system? An insight from childhood to adulthood. Brain Sciences, 13(4), 655