Category fluency test: effects of age, gender and education on total scores, clustering and switching in Brazilian Portuguese-speaking subjects

Abstract

Verbal fluency tests are used as a measure of executive functions and language, and can also be used to evaluate semantic memory. We analyzed the influence of education, gender and age on scores in a verbal fluency test using the animal category, and on number of categories, clustering and switching. We examined 257 healthy participants (152 females and 105 males) with a mean age of 49.42 years (SD = 15.75) and having a mean educational level of 5.58 (SD = 4.25) years. We asked them to name as many animals as they could. Analysis of variance was performed to determine the effect of demographic variables. No significant effect of gender was observed for any of the measures. However, age seemed to influence the number of category changes, as expected for a sensitive frontal measure, after being controlled for the effect of education. Educational level had a statistically significant effect on all measures, except for clustering. Subject performance (mean number of animals named) according to schooling was: illiterates, 12.1; 1 to 4 years, 12.3; 5 to 8 years, 14.0; 9 to 11 years, 16.7, and more than 11 years, 17.8. We observed a decrease in performance in these five educational groups over time (more items recalled during the first 15 s, followed by a progressive reduction until the fourth interval). We conclude that education had the greatest effect on the category fluency test in this Brazilian sample. Therefore, we must take care in evaluating performance in lower educational subjects.

Phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks: normative data for elderly Brazilians

“…Studies show that age is not a predictor of performance on tests of verbal fl uency (Brucki & Rocha, 2004;Venegas & Mansur, 2011). In contrast, Amaral-Carvalho and Caramelli (2012) found an association between age and performance of verbal fl uency tasks, as well as the results of other studies (Ryu et al, 2012;Silva et al, 2011;Snitz et al, 2009) corroborate the idea that the greater the age of the person, the smaller the words production of animals.…”

“…Although the purpose of the activities is the same (evoking words), patients may present different performances according to the modality used and the type of stimulus chosen (Beausoleil, Monetta, Leblanc, & Joanette, 2001), since there are less frequent words that begin with specifi c letter (letter B versus X), as well as more restricted semantic fi elds (food versus color). In addition, sociodemographic characteristics, such as age and education, have been reported as variables that infl uence performance in both modalities (Bolla, Gray, Resnick, Galante, & Kawas, 1998;Brucki & Rocha, 2004;Carnero, Lendínez, Maestre, & Zunzunegui, 1999;Kempler, Teng, Dick, Taussig, & Davis, 1998;Silva, Yassuda, Guimarães, & Florindo, 2011). Other authors also point to the contribution of gender (Kempler et al, 1998;Silva et al, 2011).…”

Methodological Criteria for Scoring Clustering and Switching in Verbal Fluency Tasks

“…We attempted to contribute to the analysis of the cognitive components underlying VF performance to assist in refining the diagnosis and prognosis of neuropsychological performances. Up to date, the Brazilian studies using this method (Becker et al, 2014;Bertola et al, 2014;Brucki & Rocha, 2004;Lopes et al, 2009;Silva et al, 2011;Toazza et al, 2014) to answer the research questions did not describe the scoring rules in detail so as to enable accurate replication.…”

“…We could find studies of adults (Brucki & Rocha, 2004) and healthy elderly , elderly with mild cognitive decline (Bertola et al, 2014), patients with Alzheimer's disease (Lopes et al, 2009), patients with lesion in the right hemisphere (Becker, Muller, Rodrigues, Villavicencio, & Salles, 2014), and children with anxiety disorders (Toazza et al, 2014). However, we could not find specific studies discussing the criteria used to make up clusters and switching analysis between them.…”

“…In SVF tasks, the words retrieved should belong to a certain category, such as fruits, animals and clothes; whereas animals is the most commonly used category in the literature (Charchat-Fichman, Oliveira, & Silva, 2011). Most Brazilian studies on VF include SVF tasks using the animal category (Araujo et al, 2011;Brucki, Malheiros, Okamoto, & Bertolucci, 1997;Brucki & Rocha, 2004;Caramelli, Carthery-Goulart, Porto, CharchatFichman, & Nitrini, 2007;Lopes et al, 2009;Silva, Yassuda, Guimarães, & Florindo, 2011). There is a small number of studies using fruits (Paula et al, 2010), body parts (Malloy-Diniz et al, 2007), and clothes (Fonseca, Parente, Côté, Ska, & Joanette, 2008;Moraes et al, 2014;Zimmermann, Parente, Joanette, & Fonseca, 2014).…”