No abstract

Articles were included in this review if they met 3 key criteria: (1) male or female participants aged ≥18 years; (2) confirmed ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke, and (3) analysis of the sensitivity and specificity of a cognitive screening measure compared with a gold standard neuropsychological assessment.

Our findings highlight that both lower and higher order cognitive skills contribute to verbal fluency tasks; however, these contributions vary considerably across fluency variants and age groups. The heterogeneity of cognitive determinants of verbal fluency, across variants and age, may explain why older people performed less proficiently on semantic and excluded letter fluency tasks while no age effects were found for phonemic and alternating fluency. Interpretation of verbal fluency performances need to be tailored according to which verbal fluency variant and age group are used.

Further research examining the factors contributing to sexual changes is warranted.