A change in the way you speak could be a reliable early indicator of dementia, according to recent research. Many people associate forgetting words with a decline in brain health - but research shows there is a better sign.
A recent study from the University of Toronto suggests that it’s the speed of speech, rather than the difficulty in finding words that is a more accurate indicator of brain health in older adults. Claire Lancaster, lecturer in dementia at the University of Sussex, said the researchers asked 125 healthy adults, aged 18 to 90, to describe a scene in detail.
Recordings of these descriptions were analysed by artificial intelligence (AI) software to extract features such as speed of talking, duration of pauses between words, and the variety of words used.
Claire said: "Participants also completed a standard set of tests that measure concentration, thinking speed, and the ability to plan and carry out tasks. Age-related decline in these 'executive' abilities was closely linked to the pace of a person’s everyday speech, suggesting a broader decline than just difficulty in finding the right word."
The study used a “picture-word interference task” where participants were shown pictures of everyday objects (such as a broom) while being played an audio clip of a word that is either related in meaning (such as “mop” – which makes it harder to think of the picture’s name) or which sounds similar (such as “groom” – which can make it easier).
Claire said: "Interestingly, the study found that the natural speech speed of older adults was related to their quickness in naming pictures. This highlights that a general slowdown in processing might underlie broader cognitive and linguistic changes with age, rather than a specific challenge in memory retrieval for words."
She told [The Conversation](https://theconversation.com/slowed-speech-may-indicate-cognitive-decline-more-accurately-than-forgetting-words-224812) : " While verbal fluency performance does not significantly decline with normal ageing (as shown in a 2022 study), poor performance on these tasks can indicate neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.The tests are useful because they account for the typical changes in word retrieval ability as people get older, allowing doctors to identify impairments beyond what is expected from normal ageing and potentially detect neurodegenerative conditions.
"The verbal fluency test engages various brain regions involved in language, memory, and executive functioning, and hence can offer insights into which regions of the brain are affected by cognitive decline.
"The authors of the University of Toronto study could have investigated participants’ subjective experiences of word-finding difficulties alongside objective measures like speech pauses. This would provide a more comprehensive understanding of the cognitive processes involved.
"Personal reports of the “feeling” of struggling to retrieve words could offer valuable insights complementing the behavioural data, potentially leading to more powerful tools for quantifying and detecting early cognitive decline."