20s to 80s, considering phonological and lexical routes of reading. Methods: This study classified 120 normal adults into a younger group (20-39 years), middle-age group (40-59 years), and older group (60-89 years), and conducted a reading aloud task under various conditions. Results: The performance of the older group decreased in irregular words and regular nonwords compared to the younger (p < .001) and middle age (p = .001) groups. For irregular nonwords, performance of the older group decreased compared to the younger group (p = .002). Conclusion: The results show that lexical routes for reading irregular words with graphemes and phonemes not corresponding to each other are affected by aging. This signifies that the cognitive load for reading irregular nonwords grows with age; these nonwords should be read by borrowing phonological changes in words with similar phonological conditions through phonological and lexical routes. To sum up, declines in language ability and cognitive functioning and reduced attention during the normal aging process can affect the ability to use information through lexical routes, and reading that requires complex cognitive processing is more affected by aging.

Purpose: Writing deficits are one of the major indicator of cognitive decline. The purpose of this study was to investigate the word-writing performance according to the degree of cognitive decline.Methods: Eighty-seven participants [30 patients with subjective memory complaint (SMC), 30 patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), and 27 patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD)] performed tasks involving writing regular words, irregular (phoneme-grapheme noncorrespondent) words, and nonwords. Data were collected using a tablet personal computer and digital pen, and were analyzed according to four categories: the number of the correct response, error types, graphemic writing time, and pause time.Results: There was no difference between the SMC group and the aMCI group regardless of the writing task types, whereas the AD group scored significantly lower compared with the aMCI group in irregular word-writing task. Additionally, all three groups showed poor performance in the order of regular words, nonwords, and irregular words. The most frequent error types in all three groups were substitution, elision, and addition. There was no difference in the graphemic writing time and pause time.Conclusion: Our findings show that declined cognitive function may affect the lexical route during writing. This study is meaningful because it is the first attempt to investigate the word-writing performance according to the degree of the neuropathological deficits.