Fast talkers are favored: impact on cognition
I feel vindicated...
Yes. I admit. I am a ‘fast talker’. Feedback from my presentations and lectures always included the advice to “slow down!” But I am a ‘fast thinker’ and the words just come tumbling out, sometimes. Now comes a Word Finding study of aging folks which shows that speed of speech is correlated with cognitive decline. That is, overall slower speech means slower brain processing.
Word-finding speed decreases over the lifespan, along with other abilities. For example, recognizing a picture and recalling its name both worsen with age; but apparently this is not associated with a decline in other mental functions. The number and length of pauses we take to search for the right words are not correlated to brain strength and vigor.
Instead, how fast we are able to name pictures predicted how fast they spoke in general, and both are linked to executive function. Pausing to find words is normal, but the speed of speech surrounding those pauses are indicative of our brain’s health.
ABSTRACT. Word-finding difficulty (WFD) is a common cognitive complaint in aging, manifesting both in natural speech and in controlled laboratory tests. Various theories of cognitive aging have addressed WFD, and understanding its underlying mechanisms can help to clarify whether it has diagnostic value for neurodegenerative disease. Two influential “information-universal” theories attribute it to rather broad changes in cognition. The processing speed theory posits a general slowdown of all cognitive processes, while the inhibitory deficit hypothesis (IDH) predicts a specific problem in suppressing irrelevant information. One “information specific” theory of language production, the transmission deficit hypothesis (TDH), posits a breakdown in retrieval of phonological word forms from a corresponding lemma. To adjudicate between these accounts, we administered an online gamified covert naming task featuring picture-word interference (PWI), previously validated to elicit similar semantic interference and phonological facilitation effects as overt naming tasks. 125 healthy adults aged 18 to 85 completed the task, along with a battery of executive function tasks and a naturalistic speech sample to quantify WFD in connected speech. PWI effects provided strong support for the TDH but limited support for IDH, in that semantic interference increased and phonological facilitation decreased across the lifespan. However, neither of these effects on single-word retrieval associated with WFD measured in connected speech. Rather, overall reaction time for word retrieval (controlling for psychomotor slowing) was the best predictor of spontaneous WFD and executive function decline, suggesting processing speed as the key factor, and that verbal reaction time may be an important clinical measure.
So the need to pause to search for words is a normal part of aging. It is the slowing down of normal speech, regardless of this pausing, that may be the more important indicator of deteriorating brain health.
As for that finding of word-finding speed declining with increasing age, do remember that the Baby Boomers are the best performers when it comes to knowledge of vocabulary words. Thus, it is likely that they have more words to sort through for recall, when compared to the youths.
Then it is understandable that it takes longer to find the correct word as you age. The more clutter in the path, the slower you go. Best to streamline your verbal networks, with active unlearning:
And here is an interesting map. Yes, I do live in Massachusetts.
REFERENCES
HT Wei et al. Cognitive components of aging-related increase in word-finding difficulty. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition (2024). DOI: 10.1080/13825585.2024.2315774