Introduction: Verbal fluency measures involving semantic and
action fluency are frequently used by neuropsychologists and speech and
language therapists in linguistic and/or cognitive assessment. Both of these
fluency measures are implemented through noun or verb categories produced
within a limited time period following certain verbal clues presented. Being
fast and quick, these measures are included in the neuropsychological test
batteries that are used to diagnose a wide array of diseases and/or disorders.
It is observed that “Animals” and “Supermarket” categories are frequently used
in semantic fluency measures (Ardila, Ostrosky-Solis, and Bernal, 2006; Tröster
et al., 1995). A special importance to semantic fluency measures is attached as
it is mentioned that due to the impairment in the semantic memory among
Alzheimer’s patients, the performance derived out of these patients help
clinicians differentiate this type of dementia from others. Being a more recent
type of measure, action fluency involves producing as many verbs as possible
during the task (Piatt, Fields, Paolo, and Tröster, 1999a). It is said that
action fluency measures could be performed to carry out executive function
assessment among healthy individuals, while it also holds potential to
distinguish Parkinson’s patients having a concomitant Alzheimer’s disease from
those that do not have it (Piatt et al., 1999a; 1999b; Signorini and Volpato, 2006).
There are variables that are said to influence these measures: Cognitive
variables (that include verbal memory and executive functions), neuro-anatomic
variables, demographic variables (that widely include education, age, and
gender) (Casals-Coll et al., 2013; Clark et al., 2014; Pihlajamäki et al.,
2000;Shao, Janse, Visser, and Meyer, 2014; Stokholm, Jorgensen, and Vogel,
2013).The aim of this article is to examine the semantic and action fluency
performance during 1.5 minutes. “Breakfast Items, Famous People, Food,
Beverages, Household Items” categories were selected for semantic fluency
measurement. As for action fluency, “Saying things people do” were requested
from participants. Furthermore, the influence of demographic variables
(education, age and gender) were examined. Method: 150 Turkish-speaking
participants whose age ranged from 15 to 81 participated in the study. Informed
consent was taken from all the participants and the study received the approval
of the Ethical Committee of Anadolu University. During the implementation all
the participants followed the same order of categories at one sitting. Along
with the consent of all the participants, voice recordings were taken and these
were listened by the researchers of the study to determine the words produced
during the task. The data gathered were analyzed through descriptive and
inferential methods. Results and discussion: Regarding the mean values across
age groups, it was observed the highest and lowest values were obtained from
15-17 and 60 and above age groups respectively. Previous studies mostly
confirmed the effect of age on the performance (Cavaco et al., 2013; Egeland,
Landrø, Tjemsland, and Walbækken, 2006; Ito, Hatta, Ito, Kogure, and Watanabe,
2004; Khalil, 2010). It was also mentioned that there might be
category-specific differences in the performance as no significant difference
was observed among “Household Items, Food and Breakfast Items”. In the
education variable it was also seen the highest mean values were attained by
the participants receiving education lasting for 12 years and more. Moreover,
the lowest mean values were observed among participants engaging in 1-8 years
of education. The influence of education was widely articulated in previous
studies that both measure semantic and action fluency (Alfimova, 2010; Piatt,
Fields, Paolo, and Tröster, 2004; Stokholm et al., 2013). As for the gender,
female participants were observed to produce higher mean number of words in
“Breakfast Items and Food” categories, which was statistically significant. As
previous studies reported inconsistent results on the influence of gender
variable, it was stated that the differences found in these categories could
imply effective use of word retrieval strategies, autobiographical experience, cultural
differences (Egeland et al., 2006; Tallberg, Ivachova, Jones-Tinghag, and
Östberg, 2008). Lastly, production differences between categories were
examined, total production frequencies and first five response rates were
calculated for each category. These were especially carried out in order to
derive word lists that could be used during speech and language assessment and
therapy sessions for aphasia and other neurologic language disorders.
semantic fluency, action fluency, education, age, gender
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