[A group of seniors in discussion. Photo Credit to Freepik]

A recent study published in Sage Journals has revealed a surprising connection between language ability and lifespan, suggesting that how well people use words may be tied to how long they live. 

The study, published in February 2025, found that verbal fluency, a person’s ability to quickly and efficiently produce words, may predict longer life expectancy. 

Now, compelling new findings indicate that verbal fluency may be deeply influenced by motor development, particularly in children with congenital motor impairments.

Researchers in the Berlin Aging Study meticulously tracked the cognitive functions of more than 500 participants aged 70 and older from 1990 to 2009. 

After analyzing data from decades of follow-up, they discovered that verbal fluency was the only cognitive skill, among others like memory or vocabulary, significantly associated with longer survival. 

The results were remarkable: participants with high verbal fluency had a nearly nine-year advantage in predicted median survival time over those with low verbal fluency.

But what exactly is verbal fluency? 

It refers to the ability to rapidly generate words under specific constraints, such as listing as many animals as possible or producing words starting with a particular letter. 

This mental agility relies on memory access, language production, and executive function. 

Yet recent evidence suggests it also depends on something even more foundational: motor ability.

A new study conducted by researchers at Moscow’s HSE University explored this connection in children aged 7 to 15. 

The study focused on children diagnosed with obstetric brachial plexus palsy (OBPP) or arthrogryposis multiplex congenita (AMC), both congenital motor disorders that affect upper limb mobility. 

The team compared these children’s verbal fluency and semantic association performance to that of healthy peers.

The results were striking. 

Children with motor disorders consistently scored lower on tasks involving verbal fluency and semantic association. 

These tasks included generating words within categories like animals or occupations and completing naming exercises using images of objects and actions. 

Children with bilateral impairments performed worse than those with unilateral impairments, suggesting a direct link between physical motor engagement and language development.

These findings strongly support the theory of embodied cognition, the idea that cognitive processes, including language, are grounded in physical experience. 

Language, under this view, is not just a symbolic activity processed in the brain but an ability shaped by our bodily interactions with the world. 

Children with limited mobility have fewer opportunities to explore, manipulate, and experience their environment, which may in turn limit their ability to build the rich semantic networks needed for language fluency.

Importantly, this study goes beyond simply associating movement with speech. 

It underscores how early motor limitations may cascade into long-term cognitive consequences. 

Since language fluency appears to correlate with longevity in older adults, early motor development may indirectly shape lifespan outcomes by influencing the foundation of verbal skills.

The research also aligns with earlier findings on reading and lifespan. 

A 2016 study by researchers at Yale University found that people who read books for just 30 minutes a day lived nearly two years longer than those who didn’t read. 

Notably, fiction reading had the strongest effect, possibly because it exercises memory, imagination, and verbal reasoning, all of which are closely tied to verbal fluency.

These converging studies suggest that the path to longevity may begin much earlier than previously thought, rooted in the fundamental connections between physical movement, language development, and cognitive health.