A curious case of retrogenesis in language: Automated analysis of language patterns observed in dementia patients and young children

Abstract

IntroductionWhile linguistic retrogenesis has been extensively investigated in the neuroscientific and behavioral literature, there has been little work on retrogenesis using computerized approaches to language analysis. MethodsWe bridge this gap by introducing a method based on comparing output of a pre-trained neural language model (NLM) with an artificially degraded version of itself to examine the transcripts of speech produced by seniors with and without dementia and healthy children during spontaneous language tasks. We compare a range of linguistic characteristics including language model perplexity, syntactic complexity, lexical frequency and part-of-speech use across these groups. ResultsOur results indicate that healthy seniors and children older than 8 years share similar linguistic characteristics, as do dementia patients and children who are younger than 8 years. DiscussionOur study aligns with the growing evidence that language deterioration in dementia mirrors language acquisition in development using computational linguistic methods based on NLMs. This insight underscores the importance of further research to refine its application in guiding developmentally appropriate patient care, particularly in early stages.