Summary: Increasing physical fitness improves language comprehension in older adults. Over six months, monolingual participants who followed a simple exercise program were 7% quicker at detecting words in language tests, highlighting the cognitive benefits of fitness.
The findings underline the importance of regular exercise for healthy aging and everyday communication skills. Interestingly, bilingual participants didn’t show the same improvement, suggesting unique cognitive demands in processing multiple languages.
Key Facts:
- Fitness and Cognition Link: Monolingual participants improved language comprehension speed by 7% after six months of exercise.
- Bilingual Variation: Bilingual participants showed no significant language improvement despite increased fitness, indicating unique cognitive demands.
- Simple Routine: Participants followed accessible exercises like uphill walking and cardio intervals.
Source: University of Birmingham
Increasing physical fitness levels does have a causal link with better language comprehension, according to the first study to show this effect.
The study published in Ageing, Neuropsychology and Cognition conducted by researchers from the University of Agder in Norway and University of Birmingham in the UK found that older monolingual adults who completed a six-month exercise programme were quicker at completing language comprehension tests compared to a control group.
The participants who followed a six-month home-based exercise programme were asked to do one circuit training session and two sessions of cardio intervals per week, either doing an uphill walk, a jog or run.
Following the trial, the exercise groups for both monolingual and bilingual participants had significantly improved their fitness level, measured in VO2 max scores.
Participants in the study were tested pre and post exercise regime on their ability to recognise a target word in a spoken sentence. The monolingual participants who followed the exercise regime were 7% quicker at detecting the correct words after their fitness increased.
Dr Katrien Segaert from the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham and an author of the study said:
“This is the first study we know of that establishes a causal link between improving fitness and language processing, particularly with older adults.
“Language processing is an important and interesting area of study: the ability to communicate is such a key function in everyone’s daily life.
“The results in the monolingual group show that increasing fitness is related to better cognition which underlines how important regular exercise is for healthy ageing.
“The exercise regime that participants followed was not complicated or demanding, and we saw that many of the participants were able to complete the programme by making simple adjustments to their daily routine, for example incorporating a brisk uphill walk into their day.
Among bilingual participants in the study, despite seeing increases in VO2 max scores for the exercise group, there was no relationship with improved scores in the language comprehension tests and the results were very similar to the control group.
This was despite the test being conducted in the native language of the bilingual speaker.
Dr Eunice Fernandes from the Department of Foreign Languages and Translation at the University of Agder and corresponding author said:
“We did see different results in the bilingual group than in the monolingual group. This is very likely due to the different cognitive demands involved in language processing when adding a second language.
“It’s important to note that there was no detrimental impact of improving fitness among the bilingual group, and it underscores existing studies which show that there is something more complex going on in bilingual brains when it comes to language processing that wasn’t affected by this intervention.”
Funding: This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway.
About this language, exercise, and aging research news
Author: Tim Mayo
Source: University of Birmingham
Contact: Tim Mayo – University of Birmingham
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Effects of increasing fitness through exercise training on language comprehension in monolingual and bilingual older adults: a randomized controlled trial” by Katrien Segaert et al. Aging Neuropsychology and Cognition
Abstract
Effects of increasing fitness through exercise training on language comprehension in monolingual and bilingual older adults: a randomized controlled trial
Exercise training has been proposed to counteract age-related cognitive decline through improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF hypothesis).
Research has focused on cognitive domains like attention and processing speed, and one cross-sectional study reported a positive relationship between CRF and language production in older adults.
In a randomized controlled trial, we investigated whether these benefits could extend to language comprehension in healthy older adults, and whether bilinguals, for whom language processing is more costly, would exhibit greater benefits than monolinguals.
Eighty older English monolinguals and 80 older Norwegian-English bilinguals were randomized into either a 6-month exercise training group or into a passive control group.
We assessed CRF (VO2peak) and language comprehension (reaction times to spoken word monitoring) in first (L1, all participants) and second language (L2, bilinguals only), before and after the intervention.
We found that monolinguals in the exercise group (compared to the control group) were faster in comprehension following the intervention.
Moreover, this effect was mediated by exercise-induced increases in VO2peak, supporting the CRF hypothesis. This extends previous cross-sectional research and establishes a causal link between exercise training and speeded comprehension in older monolinguals.
However, despite inducing increased VO2peak, exercise training did not affect bilingual (L1 or L2) comprehension, and bilinguals in both groups were slower after the intervention period.
Exploratory analyses suggested that this slowing may be driven by participants with low L2 proficiency, but further research is needed to examine whether bilingual language processing is in fact unaffected by exercise training and its consequent improvements in CRF.
