Researchers Find Speech Pattern That Predicts Cognitive Decline

They seem almost endless. But for many of us, there’s no more frightening prospect than that of slipping into cognitive decline. And the symptom is often just the tip of the iceberg, a precursor of dementia and the inescapable ultimate descent into Alzheimer’s disease. So you want to know your risk factors, and you’d welcome any and all early warning signs. Some are better established than others. Scientists keep learning more, too. And one speech pattern, described in a Nov 2023 study in the journal Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, could be worth watching as an early warning sign of decline.

Scientists at the academic health sciences centre Baycrest in Toronto and the University of Toronto examined speech as a harbinger of cognitive decline. Problems with what’s called word-finding difficulty (WFD) showed up as a potential flag, but that’s also a normal manifestation of ageing. Which is to say: how quickly or slowly you talk. That appears to be more of a tell-tale sign.

Our findings suggest that shifts in general speech speed may reflect changes in brain function,’ said Jed Meltzer, PhD, lead study author and Baycrest’s Canada Research Chair in Interventional Cognitive Neuroscience, in a news release, ‘and that speaking rate could be tested routinely as part of assessment protocols for cognitive changes that allow clinicians to diagnose degenerative disorders earlier and support better brain health in older adults.’

This is one of the first studies to consider talking speed alongside WFD, and involved testing 125 adults, aged between 18 and 90 years.

Participants underwent a trio of assessments, including the picture-naming game. Here, participants answered questions about photographs while attempting to ignore words blasting simultaneously through headphones, like a mop, is that right?’ Meanwhile, her headphones blared the word ‘broom’, the release explains.

And because that information came in conjunction with the word, he said, the researchers were able to test subjects on whether they could recognise what it was, and whether they could recall its name. Here’s an excerpt from the release: Advertisement

The second had them talk for a minute about two ‘complex pictures’ (60 seconds for each picture); AI then measured how quickly they spoke and how many pauses they made. Third were standard tests of specific mental abilities, such as executive function.

By the end of the series of three assessments, the scientists could confirm an expected result for the older group: WFD diminished with age. As expected, older adults did lose the ability to recognise and recall the name of something they had just seen (for example, knowing what a baseball bat is). But, contrary to expectations, the slowdown in identifying the function of objects wasn’t related to overall changes in mental acuity, nor was stopping to find a word tied to brain health.

Instead, how fast people were able to label pictures predicted how fast they talked in general, and both were connected to executive function. Or, as the press release puts it, it wasn’t paused speaking that showed the strongest relationship to brain health, but speed of speech around pauses.

So they surmise that slowing down of normal speech could be a better marker of decline than being unable to recall a word for something.

That connection still needs to be studied; the next step might be to repeat the tests with the same group of participants multiple years down the line to see whether speech speed is, in fact, predictive.

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