1913

Verbal Fluency: An Investigation of Time Variable among Elderly People

Objective: Little is known about the impact of time on the verbal fluency performance among elderly population. The aims of this study were to (i) examine the verbal fluency (semantic and action fluency) performance across four quarters of 60 seconds and (ii) explore the relationship between demographic (education and age) and time variables on the performance of elderly individuals. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study of 58 elderly healthy subjects (>59 years) was carried out. Five semantic categories and action fluency were implemented. Participants were stratified into three education groups (Group 1, 2 and 3 including subjects with 5-8 years, 9-11 and more than 12 years of schooling) and each group involved 20, 21 and 17 participants respectively. Results: The findings revealed mean numbers of words among quarters decreased in a linear fashion. There was significant difference between the production in the first quarter and others. It was seen that age did not correlate with fluency performance across quarters. Significant production differences were found between education groups across all quarters. Conclusion: This study demonstrates the fluency scores of elderly healthy subjects with different levels of education along with production across four quarters. It is suggested that future studies include neuropathological conditions for the clinical utility of these measures.

Keywords:

semantic fluency, action fluency, time education, age,

PDF

___

1. Beber BC, da Cruz AN, Chaves ML. A behavioral study of the nature of verb production deficits in Alzheimer’s disease. Brain Lang 2015; 149:128-34. 2. Davis C, Heidler-Gary J, Gottesman R, et al. Action versus animal naming fluency in subcortical dementia, frontal dementias, and Alzheimer’s disease. Neurocase 2010; 16(3):259-266. 3. Faroqi-Shah Y, Milman, L. Comparison of animal, action and phonemic fluency in aphasia. Int J Lang Commun Disord 2018; 53(2):370-84. 4. Henry JD, Crawford JR, Philips LH. Verbal fluency performance in dementia of the Alzheimer’s type: A meta-analysis. Neuropsychol 2004; 42(9):1212-1222. 5. Piatt A, Fields JA, Paolo AM, Koller WC, Tröster AI. Lexical, semantic, and action verbal fluency in Parkinson’s disease with and without Dementia. J Clin Exp Neuropsychol 1999; 21(4):435-43. 6. Lezak MD, Howieson DB, Bigler ED, Tranel D. Neuropsychological assessment. 5th ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 2012. 7. Baldo JV, Schwartz S, Wilkins D, Dronkers NF. Role of frontal versus temporal cortex in verbal fluency as revealed by voxel-based lesion symptom mapping. J Int Neuropsychol Soc 2006; 12(6):896-900. 8. Libon DJ, McMillan C, Gunawardena D, et al. Neurocognitive contributions to verbal fluency deficits in frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Neurology 2009; 73(7):535-42. 9. Beber BC, Chaves MLF. The basis and applications of action fluency and action naming tasks. Dement Neuropsychol 2014; 8(1):47-57. 10. Piatt AL, Fields JA, Paolo AM, Tröster AI. Action verbal fluency normative data for the elderly. Brain Lang 2004; 89(3):580-3. 11. Delbeuck X, Debachy B, Pasquier F, Moroni C. Action and noun fluency testing to distinguish between Alzheimer’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. J Clin Exp Neuropsychol 2013; 35(3):259-68. 12. Acevedo A, Loewenstein DA, Barker WW, et al. Category fluency test: Normative data for English- and Spanish-speaking elderly. J Int Neuropsychol Soc 2000; 6:760-769. 13. Brucki SMD, Rocha MSG. Category fluency test: Effects of age, gender and education on total scores, clustering and switching in Brazilian Portuguese-speaking subjects. Braz J Med Biol Res 2004; 37(12):1771-7. 14. Crowe SF. Decrease in performance on the verbal fluency test as a function of time: Evaluation in a young healthy sample. J Clin Exp Neuropsychol 1998; 20(3):391-401. 15. Sauzéon H, Raboutet C, Rodrigues J, et al. Verbal knowledge as a compensation determinant of adult age differences in verbal fluency tasks over time. J Adult Dev 2011; 18(3):144-54. 16. Venegas MJ, Mansur LL. Verbal fluency: Effect of time on item generation. Dement & Neuropsychol 2011; 5(2):104-7. 17. Zimmermann N, Parente MAMP, Joanette Y, Fonseca RP. Unconstrained, phonemic and semantic verbal fluency: Age and education effects, norms, discrepancies. Psicol Reflex Crit 2014; 27(1):1-9. 18. Hall JR, Harvey M, Vo HT, O’Bryant SE. Performance on a measure of category fluency in cognitively impaired elderly. Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn 2011; 18(3):353-61. 19. Kim H, Kim J, Kim DY, Heo J. Differentiating between aphasic and nonaphasic stroke patients using semantic verbal fluency measures with administration time of 30 seconds. Euro Neurol 2011; 65(2):113-7. 20. Bose A, Wood R, Kiran S. Semantic fluency in aphasia: clustering and switching in the course of 1 minute. Int J Lang Commun Disord 2017; 52(3):334-345. 21. Carmo JC, Duarte E, Pinho S, Marques JF, Filipe CN. Verbal fluency as a function of time in autism spectrum disorder: An impairment of initiation processes? J Clin Exp Neuropsychol 2015; 37(7):710-721. 22. Güngen C, Ertan T, Eker E, Yaşar R. Reliability and validity of the standardized Mini Mental State Examination in the diagnosis of mild dementia in Turkish population. Turkish Journal of Psychiatry 2002; 13(4):273-81. 23. Demetriou E, Holtzer R. Mild cognitive impairments moderate the effect of time on verbal fluency performance. J Int Neuropsychol Soc 2017; 23:44-55.