Semantic fluency: Cognitive basis and diagnostic performance in focal dementias and Alzheimer's disease

New ways to analyze word generation performance in brain injury: A systematic review and meta-analysis of additional performance measures

“…Clark et al, 2014;Gaspers et al, 2012;Ledoux et al, 2014;Reverberi et al, 2014;Troyer et al, 1997). Our literature review corroborates this, as the relevance of additional performance measures for an in-depth analysis of word generation performance and hence its diagnostic value in brain injury is emphasized in several studies (Crowe, 1996;Kavé et al, 2011;Raskin & Rearick, 1996;Silverberg et al, 2008;Velázquez-Cardoso et al, 2014;Zakzanis et al, 2011Zakzanis et al, , 2013.…”

“…In fact, several other additional performance measures are known from the literature on word generation (relating to research on other clinical pictures or healthy populations, e.g., Clark et al, 2014;Gaspers et al, 2012;Juhasz et al, 2012;Nicodemus et al, 2013;Reverberi et al, 2014;Thiele, 2013), but these were not used in the 20 articles that analyzed word generation performance in patients with brain injury. For example, studies describe analyses of other lexical or semantic parameters in correct responses, such as age of acquisition, word length, semantic typicality, familiarity, and specificity or proximity of words generated during word generation tasks, as well as analyses of semantic, orthographic, and phonemic similarity in word list generation, to examine the nature of the semantic store (e.g., Clark et al, 2014;Gaspers et al, 2012;Juhasz et al, 2012;Reverberi et al, 2014;Thiele, 2013), and analyses of a so-called "order index" as a measure of "how semantically ordered a series of items is" (Reverberi et al, 2014, p. 153), to specify underlying cognitive processes and to identify more accurate performance measures to facilitate diagnostic procedures. Computational approaches such as latent semantic analysis, which analyzes patterns of subordinated categories (Nicodemus et al, 2013), or explicit semantic analyses, which analyzes semantic distances between consecutive words (Gaspers et al, 2012), are also used.…”

“…Related evidence from other diagnostic procedures such as specific naming tasks has supported the superiority of additional and particularly temporal measures over traditional outcome scores when it comes to discriminating between subtle disorders of language and communication and the performance of healthy subjects (see, for example, Barrow et al, 2003Barrow et al, , 2006. To date, several individual studies have recommended additional outcome measures for the analysis of word generation performance (Clark et al, 2014;Gaspers et al, 2012;Juhasz, Chambers, Shesler, Haber, & Kurtz, 2012;Ledoux et al, 2014;Nicodemus et al, 2013;Reverberi, Cherubini, Baldinelli, & Luzzi, 2014;Thiele, 2013;Troyer et al, 1997), although there is no general consensus on the terminology (including qualitative measures, quantitative measures, or component scores). A systematic overview on the applicability and aims of these additional word generation measures is still lacking, however.…”

“…Based on the assumption that "qualitative aspects of lexical retrieval can offer additional insight into the cognitive processes that guide performance on VF [verbal fluency] tasks" (Ledoux et al, 2014, p. 206) and recent research on additional word generation performance measures (Clark et al, 2014;Gaspers et al, 2012;Ledoux et al, 2014;Reverberi et al, 2014), the present paper therefore provides a systematic review of original research that focused on the use of additional quantitative and qualitative performance measures in clinical populations with brain injury.…”

“…Accordingly, it has been claimed that additional measures provide one of the few opportunities to gain information that goes beyond the deficit itself and allows for therapeutic implications (Clark et al, 2014;Gaspers et al, 2012;Ledoux et al, 2014;Reverberi et al, 2014;Troyer et al, 1997). Based on the assumption that "qualitative aspects of lexical retrieval can offer additional insight into the cognitive processes that guide performance on VF [verbal fluency] tasks" (Ledoux et al, 2014, p. 206) and recent research on additional word generation performance measures (Clark et al, 2014;Gaspers et al, 2012;Ledoux et al, 2014;Reverberi et al, 2014), the present paper therefore provides a systematic review of original research that focused on the use of additional quantitative and qualitative performance measures in clinical populations with brain injury.…”