Objective: To assess the average number of words spoken per day by individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and control participants.

Background: There is limited research of the number of words spoken per day by healthy individuals or people with cognitive impairment. Average number of words spoken per day in a natural environment is a potential outcome measure for evaluating cognition.

Method: Participants completed an in-person visit including a review of health history, demographics, and standard cognitive assessments, including the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). A commercial recording device worn on a lanyard was used to collect audio data. During the visit, participants read a standard passage aloud for five minutes to record speech in a controlled environment. Following the visit, participants wore the device for six days during waking hours and completed a daily activity log.  Initial analysis, based on data completeness and quality, was completed for one full day of speech per participant. Audio files were preprocessed with a noise-robust speaker verification algorithm with sliding chunks to extract target speech from (noisy) conversations, using reading passages as ground truth of the participant’s voice. Isolated participant speech was then transcribed using AWS Transcribe service. Lastly, the Python NLTK toolkit segmented text into individual words, which were summed to estimate total words spoken (Figure 1).

Results: We enrolled 35 participants (mean (SD) age 70.3 years (14.5), 49% (n=17) women). Analysis of one recorded day was conducted for 33 participants (14 with PD, 5 with MCI, and 14 control). Two participants were excluded for incomplete data and early Alzheimer’s disease. Baseline characteristics are provided in Table 1. All participants live with at least one other individual, 29 (88%) live in a private home, and 30 (91%) are not employed. Average (SD) MoCA scores for individuals with PD was 27.6 (1.8), MCI 22.2 (2.9), and controls 27.8 (1.4). The average number of words spoken in a day (Figure 2) by individuals with PD was 6934 (4933), MCI 7181 (5454), and controls 12,116 (11,229).

Conclusion: Quantifying words spoken per day in a natural environment is feasible. Further analysis of a larger sample size is needed to compare cohorts while controlling for age and sex. Longitudinal data will allow for investigating changes in verbal fluency over time.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/words-spoken-daily-a-novel-measure-of-cognition/