Cued to think, not speak faster: Selective benefits of brief cueing for propositional speech in healthy older adults.

Propositional speech production may become more challenging with aging, particularly under conditions of increased cognitive demand. While the factors contributing to speech production difficulties are relatively well documented, far less is known about how speech production might be supported. This study examined whether brief cues presented during the speech conceptual preparation stage (i.e., the internal generation and organization of ideas prior to articulation) facilitate propositional speech production. Thirty-two younger and 26 older adults completed a propositional speech production task that required internally generated responses to complex scenes following a 5-s preparation interval. During this preparation phase, task-relevant, nonsemantic visual or auditory stimuli were presented (or absent). Two-way mixed analyses of variance and regression analyses were conducted to examine group and stimulus effects, relationships between response latency and speech errors, and the role of cognitive predictors. In the absence of external stimuli, older adults produced less fluent (more filled pauses) speech with lower propositional density and exhibited a weaker relationship between response latency and errorless speech than younger adults. The presence of brief visual or auditory stimuli significantly reduced dysfluency and increased propositional density in older adults, indicating that such cues could facilitate conceptual preparation. However, regardless of cue condition, older adults exhibited slower response initiation, reduced speech rate, and higher error rates. Across both age groups, auditory cueing was associated with faster yet less accurate performance. These findings suggest that brief, meaningless cues could facilitate sustained engagement in idea generation and expression in older adults, though their potential value in everyday communication remains to be tested with naturalistic paradigms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).