Analysis of young children’s abilities to cluster and switch during a verbal fluency task

Abstract

To investigate developmental changes that take place in verbal fluency (VF) performance during early childhood, a VF task was administered to 225 healthy, Dutch-speaking children aged between 4.14 and 6.89 years. Three categories of VF outcome measures were included: i.e., word productivity, mean cluster size, and number of switches. Age influenced performance on all VF outcome measures linearly; i.e., older children produced more words, made longer clusters, and switched more. Higher levels of intelligence were associated with increased VF word productivity, but not with measures of switching and clustering. When leaving intelligence out of these analyses, we additionally found an interaction between level of parental education (LPE) and sex on total word productivity, i.e., girls with parents who had lower LPE produced fewer words than the other children. Furthermore, a similar interaction of LPE and sex was found for the number of switches: i.e., girls who had parents with lower LPE made fewer switches than the other children. Findings suggest that even in 4 to 6-year-old children important changes take place over time in VF and in processes underlying successful performance. Attention should be paid to age-extrinsic factors, such as LPE and sex, since these have been found to influence VF performance in young children.

Developmental trajectories of executive functions in 22q11.2 deletion syndrome

“…In typically developing children, verbal fluency, measured by the number of words produced during a specific time lap, improves with age [ 47 ] until 13 to 15 years old [ 1 , 48 ]. Similarly, in our control sample, we observed a gradual increase in performance on the verbal fluency task, though we did not observe a peak around mid-adolescence (13–15 years).…”

Phonological and semantic verbal fluency test: Scoring criteria and normative data for clustering and switching strategies for Colombian children and adolescents

“…However, most of these studies have focused on TS, and more normative data for clustering and switching strategies during VFT are needed, especially for Latin American Spanish-speaking countries. Norms for clustering and switching strategies for children and adolescents population can be found for Australia (Chami et al, 2018), Brazil (Becker et al, 2019;Gonçalves et al, 2017), France (Sauzéon et al, 2004), India (John & Rajashekhar, 2014;John et al, 2016John et al, , 2018, Israel (Kavé et al, 2008;Koren et al, 2005), the Netherlands (Hurks et al, 2010;Resch et al, 2014) and Sweden (Tallberg et al, 2011). Finally, for Spanish-speaking children, Arán-Filippetti and Allegri (2011) provided norms for Argentinian children between 8 and 11 years of age using 120 participants, while Nieto et al (2008) it was for Spaniard children between 6 and 11 years old using 79 participants.…”

Using verbal fluency tasks to investigate the lexicon in Greek-speaking children with literacy and language disorders

“…Weak correlations have been reported between semantic fluency and verbal IQ and full-scale IQ (in Ardila et al, 2006). Resch et al (2014) also reported a moderate association between Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices (CPM; Raven, 2008) and semantic fluency in 4-6-year-old children.…”

“…With respect to semantic and phonological conditions, previous studies have generally shown that the number of correct items increases significantly as a function of age (e.g. Chami et al, 2018;Cohen, Morgan, Vaughn, Riccio, & Hall, 1999;Klenberg, Korkman, & Lahti-Nuuttila, 2001;Korkman, Kemp, & Kirk, 2001;Nieto, Galtier, Barroso, & Espinosa, 2008;Pastor-Cerezuela, Fernández-Andrés, Feo-Álvarez, & González-Sala, 2016;Resch et al, 2014;Sauzéon, Lestage, Raboutet, N'Kaoua, & Claverie, 2004). For example, Hurks et al (2010) assessed a large sample of Dutch children from first to ninth Grade, and found significant grade-related differences in semantic fluency performance until Grade 7.…”

“…Arán-Filippetti and Allegri's (2011) child study reported that the number of clusters explained 52% of the variance, the number of switches explained an additional 18% and cluster size explained an additional 16%. In another child study, Resch, Martens and Hurks (2014) tested 225 Dutch 4-6-year-old children using the semantic category of animals. The researchers found that semantic fluency correlated with the number of switches, the number of clusters and cluster size.…”