Did Reagan Decline?

Abstract

Background: When Ronald Reagan revealed his Alzheimer's diagnosis in 1994, it rekindled a lingering question: did dementia affect Reagan during his eight years as president? Amid countless countervailing anecdotes, Berisha et al. (2015) stepped in with an inventive systematic test. Scouring Ronald Reagan's 46 formal press conferences for specific linguistic markers, the study discovered "significant differences in variables known to be associated with the onset of dementia" (962).

Objective: Here I test whether Reagan's unique word usage rate decline is spurious, a function of reporters' increasing penchant for asking "follow-up" questions.

Methods: Focusing on the President's specific responses to distinct questions, I reanalyze Reagan's unique word usage rate while holding constant the number and type of reporter questions.

Results: I find Reagan's unique word usage rate held form throughout his eight years in the White House.

Conclusions: I conclude by considering the implications for Reagan's legacy and Alzheimer's research.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; early diagnosis; natural language processing; research methodology.