Word-Finding Difficulties: When Should You Be Concerned?

Many of us experience moments when we cannot find a word we want to use in the middle of a speech, although we know it well.

Almost everyone can experience this type of word-finding difficulty from time to time, but if it happens with a wide range of words, names and numbers, it could be a sign of a neurological disorder.

Why Does This Problem Occur Between Speakers? When Might Difficulty Finding Words Indicate Something Serious?

The production of spoken language involves several processing steps, including:

– Determine the intended meaning

– Selecting the appropriate word from the “mental dictionary” (mental dictionary of the speaker’s dictionary)

– Restoring her voice pattern

– Implementation of speech organ movements for their pronunciation.

At each of these stages of processing, word retrieval difficulties may occur.

When a healthy speaker cannot retrieve a word from his or her vocabulary despite feeling familiar, linguists call this the “tip of the tongue” phenomenon. The name of this phenomenon comes from our saying: “on the tip of the tongue,” when you cannot remember a word from memory.

The tip of the tongue is a relatively common type of speech error that occurs primarily during the restoration of the phonetic pattern of a word (the third stage of speech formation).

Difficulties finding words occur at any age, but they become more common with age. For older people, this can lead to feelings of frustration and anxiety about the possibility of developing dementia. But this is not always a cause for concern.

One Way Researchers Study Word-Finding Difficulties

One way researchers study word-finding difficulties is to ask people…

Studies in which researchers asked participants to keep a diary recording how often the tip of the tongue appeared and in what context found that some types of words, such as names of people and places, concrete nouns (such as “dog” or “building”) and abstract nouns (including concepts such as “beauty” or “truth”) are more likely to produce a tip-of-the-tongue condition than verbs and adjectives.

Less frequently used words are also more likely to lead to tip-of-the-tongue situations. This is thought to be because they have a weaker connection between their meanings and sound patterns than more commonly used words.

Research has also shown that tip-of-the-tongue utterances are more likely to occur in socially stressful circumstances, such as when speakers are told they are being evaluated, regardless of their age.

When can forgetting words mean more serious situations?

More frequent failures to remember words across a wider range of words, names and numbers are likely to indicate more serious problems.

When this happens, linguists use the terms “agnosia” or “anomic aphasia” to describe the condition, which may be associated with brain damage from stroke, tumors, head injuries, or dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease.

If people cannot describe or imagine a spoken word, this likely indicates an actual loss of knowledge or meaning of the word. This is usually a sign of a more serious problem, such as primary progressive aphasia.

Understanding Primary Progressive Aphasia

Primary progressive aphasia is a rare syndrome that affects the nervous system and affects the ability to communicate. It is described as a type of frontotemporal dementia (a group of disorders resulting from degeneration of the frontal or temporal lobes of the brain, and these areas contain brain tissue responsible for speech and language).

Studies conducted on healthy adults and people with aphasia have shown that different areas of the brain are responsible for word-finding difficulties.

In healthy adults, occasional failure to name a picture of a common object is associated with changes in activity in brain areas that control motor aspects of speech, indicating problems with spontaneous production rather than loss of word knowledge.

In cases of naming loss caused by primary progressive aphasia, the areas of the brain that process word meaning experience loss or atrophy of neurons and connections.

There are treatments for aphasia. Often, speech therapists teach a person to name problems using different types of cues to help them remember words.

Tablet and smartphone apps are also showing promising results when used as an adjunct to at-home treatments.

Unfortunately, there is no effective treatment for primary progressive aphasia, although some studies suggest that speech therapy may lead to temporary improvement.

If you are concerned about word-finding difficulties or difficulties you or a loved one are experiencing, you can ask your GP for a referral to a clinical neuropsychologist or speech therapist.

Source: Medical Express