Slowed speech, pauses, and using the same handful of words.

If you’ve witnessed these habits in an elderly loved one, it could be an early warning sign of dementia.

New research is beginning to untangle what the natural signs of aging look like and which could be due to serious brain conditions when it comes to how people talk.

For example, forgetting the name of a person, place or having difficulty finding words is natural and linked to memory retrieval, which gets worse as we get older.

However, this combined with slowed or slurring speech, blank pauses, and limited vocabulary may represent broader decline, signaling conditions like dementia and Parkinson’s.

That was the finding of a University of Toronto study in February, which looked at over 100 adults ages 18 to 90. Those who were unable to quickly verbalize what they were looking at in pictures were more likely to say the wrong word. 

The findings may be considered timely, as lawmakers and voters repeatedly call for President Joe Biden to step down over concerns about his cognitive health.

The 81-year-old suffered another disastrous press conference this week, during which he repeatedly misspoke and lost his train of thought. 

At one point, he mistakenly referred to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine as ‘President Putin.’ He then accidentally called Vice President Kamala Harris ‘Vice President Trump.’ 

And at a presidential debate against Donald Trump last month, Biden found himself trailing off.

‘Making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the… with the COVID… excuse me… dealing with everything we have to do with…’ he said before freezing for several seconds.

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‘…look, we finally beat Medicare,’ he continued.

Then it emerged the White House was visited eight times by a Parkinson’s doctor in the past year, amid speculation that Biden’s speech problems are signs of the brain disorder.

To test if trouble finding words really is an accurate indicator of brain health in older adults, the University of Toronto researchers looked at 125 healthy adults.

The patients were divided into three groups: young, middle-aged, and old.

Young participants had an average age of 26, middle-aged were 48 years old on average, and older adults had an average age of 70. 

The first phase involved a ‘picture-word interference task.’ Researchers showed the participants pictures of everyday objects – a broom, for example – while playing an audio clip of a word that is either related – such as ‘mop’ – or one that sounds similar – ‘groom,’ for instance.

The team found that older adults who naturally spoke faster were quicker to correctly name the pictures, suggesting that slower language processing might be a sign of cognitive decline rather than having trouble remembering words. 

While this might sound obvious, people’s communications styles do change as they get older, and sometimes it’s nothing to worry about.

For example, struggling to find words is something that comes with age. Older people also exhibit subtle changes to their speech, such as speaking slower, pausing between words, and a lack of variety of words used. 

But struggling to identify the word itself from memory, sometimes called the ‘tip-of-the-tongue’ phenomenon, combined with these speech changes could be a precursor of conditions like dementia, the researchers warned. 

Dementia researchers at the University of Sussex Claire Lancaster and Alice Stanton, who were not involved in the research, wrote for The Conversation: ‘This study underscores the potential of speech rate changes as a significant yet subtle marker of cognitive health that could aid in identifying people at risk before more severe symptoms become apparent.’

‘This study has opened exciting doors for future research, showing that it’s not just what we say but how fast we say it that can reveal cognitive changes.’

Biden’s cognitive health has widely been called into question, with neurologists telling DailyMail.com the President exhibits signs of Parkinson’s disease, including speech difficulties and a stiff gait. 

However, Biden maintains that he intends to stay in the presidential race, despite mounting concerns.