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Better fitness improved language understanding in many older adults

But some of the results were in stark contrast to what the researchers expected.

A new study shows that older adults improved their language comprehension after six months of exercise training.
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Presented by: University of Agder
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“The results are encouraging for older adults. We already know that physical fitness, concentration, and language comprehension gradually decline with age. Now we also know that it's possible to counteract this through exercise,” says Linda Ruth Wheeldon, a professor of language at the University of Agder.

She has examined the relationship between fitness and language comprehension in older women and men. She collaborated with researchers in language and sports from the University of Agder and the University of Birmingham.

According to Wheeldon, this study is the first to clearly show that being fit can positively affect language understanding in older people. 

Tested before and after six months of training

Data from 160 healthy older individuals aged 60 and over were analysed in the study.

80 participants were from Birmingham, England, and only spoke one language. The other 80 were from Kristiansand, Norway, and spoke two languages. These had Norwegian as their first language and strong skills in English as their second language.

Linda Ruth Wheeldon is a professor of language at the University of Agder.

Half of the participants from the two cities did exercise training for six months. The other half did not exercise. This gave researchers a solid basis for comparing progress between the training and control groups.

Language and fitness were tested before and after the training period ended.

The training was followed up 

Sports scientist Sindre Herskedal Fosstveit and colleagues at the University of Agder were responsible for the exercise programme and fitness tests in the experiment.

The training was home-based. The older adults logged their sessions. They were all given heart rate monitors and chest straps. Fosstveit could check heart rates and other data from the exercise sessions through their watches. All participants also received individual follow-up once a month.

Uphill intervals and body weight circuit training

The plan included three sessions a week  with individual adjustments. Each session lasted 40-60 minutes. It included warm-up and cool-down.

One of the sessions was interval training twice a week. Participants walked briskly uphill for two minutes before taking a break and repeating the exercise. Initially, they walked up and down five times. The intervals were gradually increased as their fitness improved. 

The other session was circuit training once a week. The goal was to combine strength exercises with elevated heart rate. The older adults performed six different strength exercises, each repeated three times for 45 seconds each.

Head, heart, and muscles need air

Circuit training is a form of exercise that can improve both fitness and muscle endurance.

Sports scientist Sindre Herskedal Fosstveit and colleagues at the University of Agder are behind the exercise programme in the study.

“By alternating between different exercises with short breaks, the body is challenged to maintain effort and intensity over time. This makes the muscles more enduring,” says Fosstveit.

He reminds us that maximum oxygen uptake is a measure of an individual's fitness level. The more oxygen the body is able to transport to the muscles and utilise during physical activity, the better your fitness.

Differences between monolinguals and bilinguals

“The training groups in both places followed the programme. They increased their fitness, that is their maximal oxygen uptake, by 7 per cent compared to the control groups,” says Fosstveit.

The control groups that did not train made little to no progress. Many performed worse on the second test of language and fitness.

The bilingual participants that trained did not make any progress on the language tests. This was in stark contrast to what the researchers expected.

So, the results of the language tests differed between the groups training in Kristiansand and Birmingham.

More difficult with two languages?

The monolingual participants in Birmingham made progress, while the bilingual participants in Kristiansand did not.

Researchers believe the difference may arise because it’s difficult to process multiple languages simultaneously. Those who speak two languages must constantly suppress interference from their second language to complete a task.

Language researcher Eunice Fernandes was responsible for the language study at the University of Agder. She emphasises that more research is needed on individuals who speak multiple languages to understand this connection.

“We know that bilinguals need extra skills to control their language use. This might take longer than thinking in one language,” says Fernandes.

They deteced keywords faster

The language tests required participants to focus and recognise specific words in spoken sentences. Researchers told them beforehand which words to identify quickly.

Language researcher Eunice Fernandes emphasises that more research is needed on individuals who speak multiple languages to understand this connection.

The sentences were designed so that the words were either easy or difficult to recognise. Sometimes the words appeared in lists of random words. Other times, the words were part of sentences with normal grammatical structure. And occasionally, the sentence structure helped make the words easier to anticipate just before they appeared.

Simply put, the different sentence types allowed researchers to investigate several aspects: How quickly older adults perceived the structure of a text, and how fast they understood its meaning.

7 per cent faster with better fitness

The training group in Birmingham became 30 milliseconds (7 per cent) faster at identifying and understanding words in spoken texts. The control group there improved by only 8 milliseconds (1.8 per cent).

“7 per cent is a significant finding, even if 30 milliseconds doesn’t sound like much. I believe the progress on the language tests would have been even greater if the participants had been in worse shape before we started the training period,” says Fernandes.

She hopes more people will become aware of the relationship between exercise and language.

“The research is also about spreading the knowledge that physical exercise contributes to mental fitness and a good everyday life for older adults,” says Fernandes.

Reference:

Fernandes et al. Effects of increasing fitness through exercise training on language comprehension in monolingual and bilingual older adults: a randomized controlled trial, Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 2024. DOI: 10.1080/13825585.2024.2435914

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Read the Norwegian version of this article on forskning.no

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