Semantic Verbal Fluency of Animals: A Normative and Predictive Study in a Spanish Population

Abstract

Semantic verbal fluency is a very sensible but rather unspecific tool for the detection of neuropsychological deficits. This test is highly influenced by socio-cultural factors. Normative and predictive data for semantic verbal fluency of animals in a Spanish population are presented. The studied sample (n = 445) was stratified according to age and schooling. Statistical analysis reconfirmed a significant negative correlation (- 5.34) for age, and a significant positive correlation (5.34) for years of formal education. A predictive function for the production of names of animals during 1 min was established based on the subject's age and level of education: F(x) = 23.89 + age (- .144) + education (.39). The neuropsychological value and limitations of normative data and the predictive equation are discussed.

Verbal (animal) fluency scores in age/grade appropriate minority children from low socioeconomic backgrounds

“…These and other variables may account for differences observed in different races or ethnic groups. In keeping with this observation, Benito-Cuadrado et al (2002) noted that for a Spanish population, years of education accounted for 22.6% of variability in scores. Including age in the linear regression model accounted for an additional 10% of the variability in their adult sample.…”

Neural processing of overt word generation in healthy individuals: The effect of age and word knowledge

“…"animals" (Benito-Cuadrado et al, 2002;Brucki and Rocha, 2004;Kempler et al, 1998;Mathuranath et al, 2003;Ratcliff et al, 1998;Troyer, 2000), "clothes" (Pekkala et al, 2009), "fruit" (Kave, 2005;Ratcliff et al, 1998;Troyer, 2000), "supermarket" (da Silva et al, 2004;Troyer, 2000), "transportation" (Chan and Poon, 1999), "vehicles" and "vegetables" (Kave, 2005), or "profession" (Van der Elst et al, 2006)), which makes it difficult to compare or generalize the individual study results. Another problem is raised by the varying number of participants, ranging from 84 (Tomer and Levin, 1993) to 1856 subjects ( Van der Elst et al, 2006) and fluctuations based on age differences ranging from 54 to 99 years (Kempler et al, 1998) as compared to 18 to 91 years (Troyer, 2000) or 85 years of age (Kave, 2005), respectively.…”

“…An age-related decline in verbal fluency performance was reported (Brickman et al, 2005;Chan and Poon, 1999;Kempler et al, 1998;Kosmidis et al, 2004;Ratcliff et al, 1998;Van der Elst et al, 2006), particularly in semantic fluency tasks (Benito-Cuadrado et al, 2002;Tomer and Levin, 1993). Bolla and colleagues, however, found no association with age but strong effects with regard to verbal intelligence on verbal fluency performance (Bolla et al, 1990).…”

High blood pressure was associated with cognitive function in middle-age in the Whitehall II study

“…Verbal fluency (both phonemic and semantic) and the AH 4-I are measures of executive function or ''meta'' cognitive ability as it integrates other cognitive processes like memory, attention, and speed of information processing [36][37][38]. Studies on dementia clearly show verbal fluency to be one of the affected neuropsychological domains [36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]. Our results suggest that hypertension has an adverse effect on executive or ''meta'' cognitive abilities, implicating more basic processes like attention, memory, and speed of information processing.…”