Naming Animals and Living Longer? What Verbal Fluency Reveals About Aging and Resilience

Friday, March 28, 2025.

Can your ability to name animals quickly actually predict how long you’ll live?

According to a remarkable new study published in Psychological Science, the answer appears to be yes—at least for older adults.

Researchers diving into the rich archives of the Berlin Aging Study have uncovered a startling and oddly charming truth: out of all the cognitive skills they measured, verbal fluency stood out as the strongest predictor of longevity.

Not memory. Not vocabulary. Not even perceptual speed. Just your capacity to list animals or words beginning with a particular letter at a decent clip.

How strong is the effect? Strong enough to predict nearly a nine-year difference in median survival time.

Not All Intelligence Is Created Equal

We’ve known for a while that smarter people tend to live longer.

But this study takes that insight a step further, asking which parts of intelligence actually matter most.

Verbal fluency—those word-generating skills often tested in neuropsych exams—seems to uniquely capture something deeper than just brainy smarts. Something life-preserving.

The research, led by Paolo Ghisletta and colleagues, used long-term data on 516 very old adults (ages 70 to 103).

These individuals were tracked for up to 18 years and given a suite of cognitive tasks multiple times across the study period.

By the end of the study, every participant had passed away, giving researchers the rare opportunity to map changes in thinking alongside actual lifespan outcomes.

And only verbal fluency tasks—naming animals or “s” words in 90 seconds—offered predictive value beyond general intelligence. The results held even when controlling for all other cognitive factors.

Why Does Verbal Fluency Matter So Much?

Unlike other cognitive tasks that isolate a single skill (like speed or memory), verbal fluency is a mental juggling act.

To perform well, your brain has to access stored knowledge, keep track of what you've said, switch between categories, and do all of that at speed.

It’s a kind of whole-brain orchestra. And it’s precisely that integration that might make it a sensitive early marker of brain resilience—or its decline.

Importantly, verbal fluency draws on both fluid intelligence (quick thinking, flexible problem-solving) and crystallized intelligence (your accumulated vocabulary and world knowledge). In other words, it reflects not only how sharp you are, but how rich your mental pantry is.

It also taps into regions of the brain, like the prefrontal cortex, that are among the first to show wear in aging or neurodegenerative disease. That may explain why declines in fluency often precede visible symptoms of dementia or Parkinson’s.

It’s Not Just About Speed

Interestingly, the researchers had predicted that perceptual speed—how fast someone can match patterns or numbers—would also be a strong predictor of mortality.

And it makes intuitive sense. We often assume that fast equals sharp, and sharp equals long life. But that didn’t pan out. Verbal fluency beat out perceptual speed, episodic memory, and vocabulary as a marker of longevity.

The findings suggest that it's not about speed alone or even memory strength, but about how well you can generate, organize, and express thought under pressure. In short, it’s about coherence, agility, and executive functioning—qualities that, it turns out, may help keep us alive.

The Elegance of Longitudinal Science

One of the reasons this study is so robust is its use of a sophisticated statistical model called a joint multivariate longitudinal survival model (say that five times fast). Unlike older methods that looked at cognitive change and death risk in separate steps, this model tracks both over time in a single frame.

This matters because people who decline cognitively also tend to die sooner—which can muddy the data.

By linking changes in cognitive performance to survival in real time, the researchers avoided common statistical pitfalls and offered a much clearer window into how our mental performance truly affects our lifespan.

Before You Panic About Not Naming Enough Animals...

One of the most humane parts of the study is its caution against over-interpreting these results on an individual level. Ghisletta gently warns us not to take this as a diagnostic test.

If you blank on a few animal names at brunch, it doesn’t mean your time is up.

What this research offers is a population-level insight: across a large group, those with stronger verbal fluency tend to live longer. But that doesn’t mean every person who stumbles over “aardvark” is doomed. Human life is messier than statistics.

Still, the findings do encourage us to treat verbal fluency not just as a quirky party trick, but as a window into our brain’s ongoing health and resilience.

Implications for Aging—and Maybe Even Therapy?

As a couples therapist, I couldn’t help but read this study and wonder about the emotional and relational implications. Verbal fluency isn’t just a cognitive skill—it’s a relational one.

It allows us to tell stories, to make sense of experience, to find the right words under pressure. These are the same skills we lean on when we say the right thing to a partner in a tough moment, or when we share a memory that binds us closer to a loved one.

Is it possible that verbal fluency is not only a marker of brain health, but also of social health?

After all, our survival isn’t just physical—it’s relational. Maybe the reason verbal fluency tracks so closely with longevity is that it reflects our capacity to stay meaningfully engaged in the world, even as we age.

And here’s a wild thought: if verbal fluency is so sensitive to changes in the brain, might it also be a target for preventive or therapeutic interventions? Could word games, storytelling exercises, or even relational therapy that boosts verbal agility have spillover effects into healthy aging?

The Future: Can We Train to Stay Alive?

The researchers are cautious not to overstate their findings.

This was an observational study with an older, Berlin-based cohort, most of whom were born between 1887 and 1922. It’s possible that different results would emerge in younger or more diverse populations.

Still, the implications are rich. Verbal fluency may offer a non-invasive, inexpensive, and highly sensitive way to assess cognitive and biological resilience. And it raises tantalizing questions for future research:

• Could regular practice in verbal fluency tasks improve brain health?

• Might couples therapy that emphasizes narrative and reflection offer unexpected benefits for long-term cognitive resilience?

• Could loneliness, depression, or other emotional burdens that affect fluency also be treated as early interventions in aging?

One thing’s for sure: we shouldn’t underestimate the humble ability to find the right words.

What Naming Animals Might Say About Us All

In a culture obsessed with measuring speed, output, and recall, this study invites us to value something subtler: the ability to generate, organize, and express.

It’s a quiet kind of brilliance, and it may be more vital to survival than we knew.

So the next time someone asks you to name as many animals as you can in 90 seconds, smile.

You’re not just playing a game. You might be tuning into one of the most life-giving skills your brain has.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Ghisletta, P., Aichele, S., Gerstorf, D., Carollo, A., & Lindenberger, U. (2025). Verbal fluency selectively predicts survival in old and very old age. Psychological Science.

Let me know if you’d like a downloadable cognitive health conversation guide or a printable animal-naming fluency test for family dinner. It’s research-based, surprisingly fun, and maybe, just maybe, life-extending.