Italian researchers tested 120 neurologically healthy adults aged 60 to 88 on a large battery of reading, attention, vision and cognitive tasks to find out what drives slower reading with age. Using statistical mediation, they found that general cognitive speed matters most. The Symbol Digit Modalities Test, which combines processing speed, working memory and inhibition, accounted for roughly a quarter to more than half of the age effect on reading speed, outperforming simpler reaction-time and Stroop measures. Visual acuity explained a small share of slowing on simple word lists. Visuo-spatial attention did not mediate the age effect but moderated it: people with poorer selective and focal attention showed steeper age-related slowing on word and pseudoword lists. Sustained attention and attentional orienting played no role.
Reading gets slower with age, even in healthy, well-educated people who read every day. Most of us assume the eyes are to blame. A new study from the University of Milano-Bicocca suggests the brain’s general processing speed is the bigger story, and that a specific kind of attention decides who slows down most.
The team tested 120 healthy Italians aged 60 to 88. Each spent up to two hours on reading tasks: lists of real words and invented pseudowords, presented tightly or widely spaced; a passage from a news magazine; and a test of reading unrelated words as fast as possible. They also completed vision charts, reaction-time tests, the Stroop color-word test, a finger-tapping test of sustained attention, a visual search task that separates different kinds of spatial attention, and the Symbol Digit Modalities Test, in which people match symbols to numbers against the clock.
Age predicted slower reading on every task. The question was why. Using a statistical method called mediation analysis, the researchers asked which abilities sit on the path between age and reading. The symbol-digit test came out on top. It explained more than half of the age-related slowing in reading the magazine passage and a large share for the other tasks. When it was analyzed alongside the reaction-time and Stroop tests, it absorbed their contribution entirely. The authors argue this is because the symbol-digit test bundles processing speed, working memory and the ability to ignore distraction into one demanding task, which is also what fluent reading requires.
Vision mattered too, but less. Visual sharpness explained a small slice of slowing on simple word lists, where cognitive load is light. For harder material such as pseudowords and continuous text, cognition dominated.
The authors’ main hypothesis concerned selective visuo-spatial attention, the brain’s ability to spotlight one location and suppress clutter around it. They expected it to sit on the causal path. It did not. Instead, it changed the strength of the age effect. Among people with weaker selective attention, reading time climbed steeply with age; among those with strong attention, the age slope was much flatter. At around 80, the difference on a word list amounted to roughly ten seconds out of thirty to forty. A narrower “focal” component of attention behaved similarly, while the ability to shift attention between locations had no effect. Sustained attention, the capacity to stay on task, was also irrelevant.
The practical message the authors draw is that general processing speed is hard to train, but visual attention may be a more specific and trainable target. The same group has already piloted eye-controlled video games for older readers.
There are limits. The study compares different people at different ages rather than following anyone over time, which makes causal language about “decline” premature. Many of the tests share a dependence on speed, which can inflate apparent links. The attention findings emerged only after the planned analysis failed, and several rested on borderline statistics.
Still, the study reframes reading in later life as a readout of attentional health, not just eyesight.
Actionable insights
The study tests no intervention, so these points follow from its associations plus one related trial.
How big is the age effect? On the speed-reading test, scores fell by roughly 18 words per minute per decade, about 14% of the group average. For simple word lists, reading time rose about 8 seconds per decade, roughly 30% of the average. [Confidence: Medium, back-calculated from standardized coefficients]
Processing speed is the main channel. The symbol-digit test carried about 57% of the age effect on reading a news passage and about 43% on speed reading. Habits that preserve general cognitive speed are therefore the most relevant lever, though none were tested here. [Confidence: Medium]
Keep your vision corrected. Visual acuity explained only about 6 to 7% of the age effect, and only for simple word lists. It is still the cheapest factor to fix: get regular eye exams that include near-vision correction. [Confidence: Medium]
Attention training is plausible but unproven. The same lab enrolled 40 healthy participants over 65 in an eye-guided video game pilot. Reading improved, but attentional measures did not change.
Noticeable slowing in reading unfamiliar or dense text is worth tracking as a cognitive signal, not as a diagnosis.
Context and source
- Open Access Paper: Reading in healthy aging: how attentional components drive age-related changes
- Institutions: Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca; NeuroMI Milan Centre for Neuroscience; Golgi Cenci Foundation (Abbiategrasso); Mercatorum University (Rome); LUMSA University (Rome)
- Country: Italy
- Journal: Aging Clinical and Experimental Research (Springer). DOI 10.1007/s40520-026-03535-9
- Impact evaluation: The impact score of this journal is 4.7, evaluated against a typical high-end range of 0 to 60+ for top biomedical journals, therefore this is a Low impact journal.