성별 및 연령이 구어유창성과 작업기억 수행력에 미치는 영향

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine how gender and aging affect verbal fluency performance depending on the task types and how their performance is associated with working memory capacity in cognitively healthy Korean adults. A total of 120 normal adults (60 males and 60 females) residing in Korea, matched for age and education, were categorized into three age groups: younger (20-39 years), middle-aged (40-59 years), and older adults (60-79 years). Verbal fluency was assessed using semantic and verb fluency tasks. Working memory was evaluated through digit span tasks. Significant gender-related differences were found in verbal fluency tasks, with females consistently outperforming males in all tasks, particularly semantic fluency. Moreover, a noticeable decline in performance on verbal fluency tasks is observed among the different age groups, with young adults displaying the highest performance, followed by middle-aged and older adults. Remarkably, the interplay between task type and gender emphasizes that females excel in semantic fluency across all age groups. In younger and older groups, the fluency task that best distinguishes gender was the verb fluency task, and a significant correlation was observed between working memory and all verbal fluency tasks in male and female groups. These findings suggest that males may face challenges in specific verbal fluency tasks compared to females, potentially influenced by various factors and complex interactions.