Badal Varsha D, Reinen Jenna M, Twamley Elizabeth W, Lee Ellen E, Fellows Robert P, Bilal Erhan, Depp Colin A
Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, United States.
Sam and Rose Stein Institute for Research on Aging, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, United States.
JMIR Aging. 2024 Sep 16;7:e54655. doi: 10.2196/54655.
About one-third of older adults aged 65 years and older often have mild cognitive impairment or dementia. Acoustic and psycho-linguistic features derived from conversation may be of great diagnostic value because speech involves verbal memory and cognitive and neuromuscular processes. The relative decline in these processes, however, may not be linear and remains understudied.
This study aims to establish associations between cognitive abilities and various attributes of speech and natural language production. To date, the majority of research has been cross-sectional, relying mostly on data from structured interactions and restricted to textual versus acoustic analyses.
In a sample of 71 older (mean age 83.3, SD 7.0 years) community-dwelling adults who completed qualitative interviews and cognitive testing, we investigated the performance of both acoustic and psycholinguistic features associated with cognitive deficits contemporaneously and at a 1-2 years follow up (mean follow-up time 512.3, SD 84.5 days).
Combined acoustic and psycholinguistic features achieved high performance (F-scores 0.73-0.86) and sensitivity (up to 0.90) in estimating cognitive deficits across multiple domains. Performance remained high when acoustic and psycholinguistic features were used to predict follow-up cognitive performance. The psycholinguistic features that were most successful at classifying high cognitive impairment reflected vocabulary richness, the quantity of speech produced, and the fragmentation of speech, whereas the analogous top-ranked acoustic features reflected breathing and nonverbal vocalizations such as giggles or laughter.
These results suggest that both acoustic and psycholinguistic features extracted from qualitative interviews may be reliable markers of cognitive deficits in late life.
在65岁及以上的老年人中，约三分之一的人经常患有轻度认知障碍或痴呆症。从对话中提取的声学和心理语言特征可能具有很大的诊断价值，因为言语涉及言语记忆以及认知和神经肌肉过程。然而，这些过程的相对衰退可能不是线性的，并且仍未得到充分研究。
本研究旨在建立认知能力与言语及自然语言生成的各种属性之间的关联。迄今为止，大多数研究都是横断面研究，主要依赖于结构化互动的数据，并且仅限于文本分析与声学分析。
在71名年龄较大（平均年龄83.3岁，标准差7.0岁）的社区居住成年人样本中，他们完成了定性访谈和认知测试，我们同时以及在1 - 2年随访时（平均随访时间512.3天，标准差84.5天）调查了与认知缺陷相关的声学和心理语言特征的表现。
在估计多个领域的认知缺陷时，声学和心理语言特征的组合表现出高性能（F值为0.73 - 0.86）和敏感性（高达0.90）。当使用声学和心理语言特征来预测随访认知表现时，表现仍然很高。在对高认知障碍进行分类时最成功的心理语言特征反映了词汇丰富度、言语产出量和言语碎片化，而类似的排名靠前的声学特征反映了呼吸和非言语发声，如咯咯笑或大笑。
这些结果表明，从定性访谈中提取的声学和心理语言特征可能是晚年认知缺陷的可靠指标。
