Performance of Brazilian children on phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks

Abstract

The most used verbal fluency paradigms are semantic and letter fluency tasks. Studies suggest that these paradigms access semantic memory and executive function and are sensitive to frontal lobe disturbances. There are few studies in Brazilian samples on these paradigms.ObjectiveThe present study investigated performance, and the effects of age, on verbal fluency tasks in Brazilian children. The results were compared with those of other studies, and the consistency of the scoring criteria data is presented.MethodsA sample of 119 children (7 to 10 years old) was submitted to the three phonemic fluency (F, A, M) tasks and three semantic fluency (animals, clothes, fruits) tasks. The results of thirty subjects were scored by two independent examiners.Results A significant positive correlation was found between the scores calculated by the two independent examiners. Significant positive correlations were found between performance on the semantic fluency task and the phonemic fluency task. The effect of age was significant for both tasks, and a significant difference was found between the 7- and 9-year-old subjects and between the 7- and 10-year-old subjects. The 8-year-old group did not differ to any of the other age groups.ConclusionThe pattern of results was similar to that observed in previous Brazilian and international studies.

Methodological Criteria for Scoring Clustering and Switching in Verbal Fluency Tasks

“…As for SVF tasks, mental imaging strategies (imagining scenarios based on the category of words) facilitate response retrieval. In addition, responses to SVF seem to be more related to the lexical-semantic networks that are part of the semantic memory (Charchat-Fichman et al, 2011), which develops prior to the executive functions. Thus, the improvement of SVF is more apparent in early childhood.…”

“…In the literature, the most frequently used letters are: F, A, and S; or C, F, and L; or even P, R, and W (Oberg & Ramírez, 2006). In SVF tasks, the words retrieved should belong to a certain category, such as fruits, animals and clothes; whereas animals is the most commonly used category in the literature (Charchat-Fichman, Oliveira, & Silva, 2011). Most Brazilian studies on VF include SVF tasks using the animal category (Araujo et al, 2011;Brucki, Malheiros, Okamoto, & Bertolucci, 1997;Brucki & Rocha, 2004;Caramelli, Carthery-Goulart, Porto, CharchatFichman, & Nitrini, 2007;Lopes et al, 2009;Silva, Yassuda, Guimarães, & Florindo, 2011).…”

“…There is a small number of studies using fruits (Paula et al, 2010), body parts (Malloy-Diniz et al, 2007), and clothes (Fonseca, Parente, Côté, Ska, & Joanette, 2008;Moraes et al, 2014;Zimmermann, Parente, Joanette, & Fonseca, 2014). PVF tasks are also mentioned in national studies using the letters F, A, and S (Charchat-Fichman et al, 2011;Fonseca, Salles, & Parente, 2009;Machado et al, 2009), the letter P (Fonseca et al, 2008;Moraes et al, 2014;Zimmermann et al, 2014), and the letter M (Charchat-Fichman et al, 2011;Salles et al, in press).…”

“…All these components are dependent on executive functions and the maturation of the frontal lobes, which reaches its peak between 10 and 12 years old (Tallberg et al, 2011). In addition, PVF is also dependent on educational level and growth of the orthographic lexicon (Charchat-Fichman et al, 2011).…”

Evidências de validade dos escores estratégicos na tarefa de fluência verbal infantil

“…As crianças incluídas neste estudo fizeram parte do projeto de pesquisa Estudo das Propriedades Psicométricas de Quatro Paradigmas Clássicos em Avaliação Neuropsicológica (Charchat-Fichman, Oliveira, & Morais, 2011;Oliveira, Mograbi, Gabrig, & Charchat-Fichman, 2016), aprovado pela Comissão de Ética do Departamento de Psicologia da Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RIO). A amostra total foi composta de 396 crianças de sete a 14 anos, sem diagnóstico de doenças neuropsiquiátricas, transtornos de aprendizagem ou histórico de reprovações.…”