Adult Age Differences in Strategy Use During Verbal Fluency Performance

Abstract

This study investigated adult age differences in strategy use during verbal fluency performance among 60 older and 60 younger adults. Clustering and switching, strategic components of fluency, were investigated as predictors of performance along with cognitive processes thought to underlie these strategies, namely verbal ability, speed of processing and executive function (strategic planning, performance monitoring, etc.). Two measures of verbal fluency were used: initial and excluded letter (words produced not containing a designated letter). These tasks both require search for words based on a phonemic cue but are thought to reflect a differential reliance on strategic retrieval search processes for successful performance. The number of clusters produced accounted for age differences in excluded, but not initial, letter fluency. Performance on both fluency tasks was associated with the number of clusters and switches participants produced and initial letter fluency was associated with cluster size for older adults and a ratio index of effective search for both age groups. In general, both fluency tasks relied on verbal ability and articulation speed, and excluded letter fluency performance relied more on speed and executive function than did initial letter fluency, especially for older adults.

Unconstrained, phonemic and semantic verbal fluency: age and education effects, norms and discrepancies

“…This might have occurred because their samples only included elderly (Machado et al, 2009) or young and middle-aged adults (Buriel et al, 2004;Villodre et al, 2006). Nevertheless, other studies have investigated different age groups and have not found the age effect either (Hughes & Bryan, 2002;Steiner et al, 2008;Tallberg et al, 2008). Such discordant fi ndings may be explained by differences in the sample sizes, inclusion criteria, and statistical analyses used in each study.…”

“…Conversely, there is evidence of an education effect, showing that highly educated outperform low education individuals (Buriel, Gramunt Fombuena, Böhm, Rodés, & Peña-Casanova, 2004;Butman et al, 2000;Kosmidis, Vlahou, Panagiotaki, & Kiosseoglou, 2004;Peña-Casanova et al, 2009;Rami, Serradell, Bosch, Villar, & Molinuevo, 2007;Van Der Elst, Van Boxtel, Van Breukelen, & Jolles, 2006;Villodre et al, 2006). However, some investigations present different fi ndings (Buriel et al, 2004;Hughes & Bryan, 2002;Machado et al, 2009;Steiner, Mansur, Brucki, & Nitrini, 2008;Tallberg, Ivachova, Tingha, & Östberg, 2008;Tombaugh, Kozak, & Rees, 1999;Villodre et al, 2006), most likely due to population sampling and data analysis heterogeneous methods, such as reduced time for word searching. Ardila, Ostrosky-Solis, Rosselli, and Gomez (2000) proposed that education plays a complex role in cognition through the lifespan, in a way a single relationship between age and education cannot be established.…”

BRBN-T validation: adaptation of the Selective Reminding Test and Word List Generation

“…Many studies have analyzed the influence of this variable on the performance of phonemic verbal fluency and a robust effect regarding the level of education has been demonstrated: the level of education is a strong predictor of the performance on this task, with increasing educational achievement being associated with higher fluency scores 27,28,29 . Thus, the influence of the level of education on the participants' performance for each letter was analyzed: D was the only one that did not differentiate between participants with high levels of education and participants with low levels of education (see Table 2).…”

“…However, in the first stage of these analyses, and knowing that the variable level of education is highly correlated with the performance on verbal fluency tasks 27,28,29 , we analyzed the influence of this variable in our results. Founding that D was the only letter that did not differentiate participants with high levels of education from those with low levels of education (p < 0.005), we excluded it from the next set of analyses.…”

Action verbal fluency in Parkinson’s patients

“…However, they depend on several factors and are thus not considered pure tasks from the point of view of the assessed functions. A synchronised involvement of different cognitive mechanisms is highlighted by several studies 18 . In regards to the relationship between verbal fluency tests and the assessment of language and executive functions, evidence has shown that verbal fluency tasks partially depend on a linguistic component 19 , the executive aspects of language processing, specifically the construction of concepts 20 , and the strategies for lexical search used throughout the test 21 .…”