Does previous presentation of verbal fluency tasks affect verb fluency performance?

Bárbara Costa Beber,Márcia L.F Chaves

doi:10.1590/s1980-57642016dn10100006

Abstract

ABSTRACTBackground:Performance on the verb fluency (VF) task may be influenced by administration procedures and demographic factors of each population. Objective:The aim of this study was to verify whether the previous administration of semantic and phonemic verbal fluency tasks can influence performance on VF; and to analyze the correlation of VF performance with education, age and type of errors in Brazilian healthy elderly. Methods:Sixty-two participants were subdivided into experimental (semantic and the phonemic fluency tasks were administered before the VF) and control groups (VF only). The total score and the types of errors on the VF task were determined. Additional information was computed for the correlational analysis. Results:VF performance did not differ statistically between experimental and control groups, but correlated positively with education and negatively with intrusions. Conclusion:The lack of influence of other verbal fluency tasks on performance of the VF task in elderly individuals allows the use of this order of administration. A strong influence of educational level on VF task performance reinforces the need for further studies in different populations.

Highlights

Verb Fluency (VF) is a task of verbal fluency that requests the subject to say as many verbs as they can within one minute
The aim of this study was to verify whether the previous administration of semantic and phonemic verbal fluency tasks can influence performance on the verb fluency (VF) task in Brazilian healthy elderly
No significant difference was observed in VF performance between the CG and EG (Mann-Whitney test; p = 0.133) (Table 2)

Summary

Introduction

Verb Fluency (VF) is a task of verbal fluency that requests the subject to say as many verbs (or “things that people do”) as they can within one minute. The classic verbal fluency tasks (semantic and phonemic) request the production of nouns or object categories.[1] Patients with different types of frontal brain pathology exhibit worst performance on the VF than on other verbal fluency tasks. This dissociation has been described in patients with nonfluent Primary Progressive Aphasia, behavioral Frontotemporal Dementia, HIV-1 infection, schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease.[2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12].

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