Rui and I have a new paper out in which we discuss the role of environmental exposure and several cognitive mechanisms in producing changes in the mental lexicon, our storage of linguistic and semantic information, across the adult life span. We argue that models of the aging mental lexicon must integrate both ecological and psychological factors and propose a research framework that distinguishes environmental exposure from cognitive mechanisms of learning, representation, and retrieval of information. This article, co-authored with 21 colleagues from the fields of Linguistics, Psychology, and Neuroscience, is the product of the Symposium of the Aging Lexicon held in Basel, Switzerland, on June 7-9, 2018. Learn more about the Symposium and its contributors at aginglexicon.github.io.

Wulff, D. U., De Deyne, S., Jones, M. N., Mata, R., & Aging Lexicon Consortium. (2019). New perspectives on the aging lexicon. Trends in cognitive sciences, 23(8), 686-698. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2019.05.003