The book showed, they said, 30% fewer word types than Destination Unknown, which she wrote aged 63, 18% more repeated phrases, and almost three times as many indefinite words. The most abrupt decline was seen in a novel Christie wrote aged 81, Elephants Can Remember. "These language effects are recognised as symptoms of memory difficulties associated with Alzheimer's disease." "We found statistically significant drops in vocabulary, and increases in repeated phrases and indefinite nouns in 15 detective novels from The Mysterious Affair at Styles to Postern of Fate," said the academics, Dr Ian Lancashire from the English department and computer scientist Dr Graeme Hirst. They found that the vocabulary size of the creator of Poirot and Miss Marple decreased sharply as she neared the end of her life, by 15 to 30%, while repetition of phrases and indefinite word usage (something, thing, anything) in her novels increased significantly.
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