AI Insight
This bibliometric study analyzed 914 publications from 2001 to 2025 to map research trends on language comprehension deficits in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). The analysis revealed steady growth in this research area, with the United States leading in publications and international collaborations. Major research themes include clinical characterization of MCI and Alzheimer's disease, biomarker research, discourse analysis, semantic processing, and cognitive mechanisms, with recent focus shifting toward early language markers, ecologically valid assessments, and automated detection methods.
Why it matters
Language comprehension decline may serve as an early indicator of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, potentially enabling earlier identification and intervention. The shift toward automated and ecologically valid assessment methods could improve clinical monitoring and make screening more accessible in practice.
Understand the Science
ObjectiveA decline in language comprehension may represent a potential indicator of progressive cognitive deterioration in people with neurodegenerative diseases, and this sign often becomes noticeable as early as the mild cognitive impairment (MCI) stage. This study aimed to map the knowledge domain of language comprehension research in MCI, summarize its major research patterns, and identify recent research fronts, with a view to informing early identification, assessment, and intervention in neurodegenerative diseases.MethodsA bibliometric approach was adopted. Relevant publications were retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection, with the time span set from 2001 to 2025. After refining, manual checking, and deduplication, 914 articles and reviews were included. VOSviewer and CiteSpace were used to analyze the publication trends, subject categories, country collaborations, co-cited references, keyword co-occurrence, co-citation clusters, and citation bursts. Scopus was used as an independent database to assess the robustness of the WoS-based findings, and a generalized additive model (GAM) was fitted to compare the annual publication trajectories derived from the two databases.ResultsResearch on language comprehension in MCI showed an overall increase within the study period. The WoS and Scopus datasets differed in overall publication volume but showed no statistically detectable difference in the shape of their annual publication trends. The field is mainly distributed across neurosciences, clinical neurology, geriatrics & gerontology, psychology, and linguistics. The USA plays a leading role in both publication numbers and international collaborations. The knowledge foundation of this field is largely grounded in the clinical characterization of MCI, Alzheimer’s disease (AD) diagnostic frameworks, and biomarker research. Major research topics are organized around the clinical and biomarker-based framing of MCI and AD, together with discourse, connected speech, semantic processing, and cognitive mechanisms of comprehension. Recent hotspots point to early language markers, ecologically valid measures, and automated approaches to detection and assessment.ConclusionThis study offers a macroscopic view of language comprehension research in MCI. Future work should pay more attention to stage-related changes, cross-linguistic variations, clearer distinctions among comprehension processes, and more reliable measures for clinical monitoring and intervention evaluation. Future reviews may also extend this work to language production and broader communicative functioning in MCI.