A systematic review of the relationships amongst older adults’ cognitive and motor speech abilities

Age-related differences in motor speech performance may be only partially explained by physiological factors. In this systematic review we investigated the extent to which cognition is related to older adults’ speech. PsychInfo, PubMED, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library were last searched on 21st June 2022. Eligible studies involved healthy older adults, and/or those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), aged 60+. Study quality was formally evaluated and results presented via a narrative synthesis. In total, there were twenty-eight eligible studies identified including 1,848 older adults. Most notably, three of four studies reported significant associations between global cognition and articulation in 787 of 817 participants. Eleven of twenty-two studies investigating attention/executive abilities reported significant relationships with motor speech subprocesses in 817 of 1002 participants. Relationships between other cognitive abilities and motor speech outcomes were also reported, however, there were significant gaps in the literature and heterogeneity in the measurements used. In addition, only seven studies contained the highest quality evidence. Global cognition, and potentially executive abilities specifically, may affect speech articulation in healthy ageing and in MCI. Further research implementing a range of tasks is required to better understand the trajectory of age-related changes to cognition and motor speech production.