Paragraph recall may flag cognitive impairment

Linguistic patterns captured information beyond traditional memory scoring and were associated with cognitive performance over 7 years.

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Among 710 Long Life Family Study participants, 8 immediate-recall and 7 delayed-recall language features were associated with cognitive impairment.
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Delayed-recall linguistic scores combined with demographic characteristics distinguished cognitive impairment with an area under the precision-recall curve of 0.77, versus 0.81 for traditional scoring
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Linguistic scores were moderately correlated with traditional Logical Memory scores, suggesting they captured overlapping but not identical information.
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Higher baseline delayed-recall linguistic scores were associated with poorer TICS-m performance over follow-up but did not predict a faster rate of cognitive decline.
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The authors cautioned that potential circularity, feature selection in the full sample, and underpowered subgroup analyses limit interpretation and warrant validation in diverse cohorts.

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