The Effects of Age, Sex and Alzheimer's Disease on Strategy Use During Verbal Fluency Tasks

Abstract

Clustering and switching strategies during phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks were investigated in healthy adults (n = 193, 86 males, 20-90 years) in young, middle-aged, young-old, and old-old age groups (Study 1). Older groups produced fewer total words and lower switching scores; males relied more on clustering and females on switching to produce equivalent output. In Study 2, early Alzheimer's disease participants, compared to healthy older adults, (n = 26 per group) produced fewer total words and smaller average clusters. Sex, age, and clinical differences on switching and clustering strategies support a dual processing model of verbal fluency.

Taboo word fluency and knowledge of slurs and general pejoratives: deconstructing the poverty-of-vocabulary myth

“…They found women generated more words on FAS tasks than did men. Individual differences have also been found based on age, education, and personality traits (Barry et al, 2008;Haugrud et al, 2010;Sutin et al, 2011).…”

Animal Naming Performance in Korean Elderly: Effects of age, education, and gender, and Typicality

“…In some of the previous studies of the effects of normal aging on this SVF task [2], [16], the norm was presented including all adults over the age of 65 in one older age group, or even with younger adults in the same group, thus failing to provide clinically useful information. In particular, considering the fact that the incidence rate of Alzheimer's disease and stroke is higher in the elderly population, that generation of animal names contributed more to the diagnosis of dementia than other cognitive tasks, and that treatment generalization level is evaluated on the basis of word typicality in aphasia patients with naming difficulties [17], the ANT performance of the elderly population needs to be investigated more carefully in terms of the quantity and quality of names generated in order to satisfy the objectives of assessment and treatment.…”

“…Thus, the purpose of this study was to (1) investigate the effects of age, education, and gender on animal naming; (2) and to investigate vocabulary size and characteristics of animal naming in elderly Koreans through the rating of the production frequency and typicality of animal names generated, and thus provide the fundamental data that can be applied toward the creation of norms for the Korean-speaking population.…”

Análise de aspectos micro e macrolinguísticos da narrativa de indivíduos com doença de Alzheimer, comprometimento cognitivo leve e sem comprometimentos cognitivos

“…Algumas pesquisas com provas de fluência verbal em adultos sem comprometimento cognitivo relataram que os idosos apresentaram pior desempenho, produzindo menos palavras (Bryan, Luszcz, 2000;Lanting et al, 2009;Haugurd et al, 2010). Haugurd et al (2010) afirmaram que a menor fluência verbal dos idosos pode estar relacionada ao declínio nas funções executivas, incluindo diminuição nas estratégias de pesquisa e recuperação eficiente das palavras, do que ao declínio no conhecimento semântico.…”

“…Haugurd et al (2010) afirmaram que a menor fluência verbal dos idosos pode estar relacionada ao declínio nas funções executivas, incluindo diminuição nas estratégias de pesquisa e recuperação eficiente das palavras, do que ao declínio no conhecimento semântico. O efeito da idade nas provas de fluência verbal semântica na população brasileira sadia foi analisado por Brucki et al (1997), Brucki, Rocha (2004), Steiner et al (2008), Fichman et al (2009), Amaral-Carvalho, Caramelli (2012 e Soares et al (2012).…”