Hostname: page-component-669899f699-8p65j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-28T02:41:41.843Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The effect of age and sex on clustering and switching during speeded verbal fluency tasks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2009

SHAWNDA LANTING ,
NICOLE HAUGRUD  and
MARGARET CROSSLEY
SHAWNDA LANTING*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
NICOLE HAUGRUD
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
MARGARET CROSSLEY
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
*
*Correspondence and reprint requests to: Shawnda Lanting, Department of Psychology, 9 Campus Drive, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7N 5A5, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Past research has been inconsistent with regard to the effects of normal aging and sex on strategy use during verbal fluency performance. In the present study, both Troyer et al.’s (1997) and Abwender et al.’s (2001) scoring methods were used to measure switching and clustering strategies in 60 young and 72 older adults, equated on verbal ability. Young adults produced more words overall and switched more often during both phonemic and semantic fluency tasks, but performed similarly to older adults on measures of clustering. Although there were no sex differences in total words produced on either fluency task, males produced larger clusters on both tasks, and females switched more frequently than males on the semantic but not on the phonemic fluency task. Although clustering strategies appear to be relatively age-insensitive, age-related changes in switching strategies resulted in fewer overall words produced by older adults. This study provides evidence of age and sex differences in strategy use during verbal fluency tests, and illustrates the utility of combining Troyer’s and Abwender’s scoring procedures with in-depth categorization of clustering to understand interactions between age and sex during semantic fluency tasks. (JINS, 2009, 15, 196–204.)

Keywords

Verbal fluencyNormal agingSex differencesClusteringSwitchingLanguage
Type
Research Articles
Information
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , March 2009 , pp. 196 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © INS 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Abwender, D.A., Swan, J.G., Bowerman, J.T., & Connolly, S.W. (2001). Qualitative analysis of verbal fluency output: Review and comparison of several scoring methods. Assessment, 8, 323–336.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Benton, A.L. & Hamsher, K. (1976). Multilingual Aphasia Examination. Iowa City, IA:University of Iowa.Google Scholar
Bolla, K.I., Gray, S., Resnick, S.M., Galante, R., & Kawas, C. (1998). Category and letter fluency in highly educated older adults. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 12, 330–338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolla, K.I., Lindgren, K.N., Bonaccorsy, C., & Bleeker, M.L. (1990). Predictors of verbal fluency (FAS) in the healthy elderly. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 46, 623–6233.0.CO;2-C>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brickman, A.M., Paul, R.H., Cohen, R.A., Williams, L.M., MacGregor, K.L., Jefferson, A.L., Tate, D.F., Gunstad, J., & Gordon, E. (2005). Category and letter verbal fluency across the adult lifespan: Relationship to EEG theta power. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 20, 561–573.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brucki, S.M.D. & Rocha, M.S.G. (2004). Category fluency test: Effects of age, gender and education on total scores, clustering and switching in Brazilian Portuguese-speaking subjects. Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research, 37, 1771–1777.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Capitani, E., Laiacona, M., & Basso, A. (1998). Phonetically cued word-fluency, gender differences and aging: A reappraisal. Cortex, 34, 779–783.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, M.J. & Stanczak, D.E. (2000). On the reliability, validity, and cognitive structure of the Thurstone Word Fluency Test. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 15, 267–279.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crossley, M., D’Arcy, C., & Rawson, N. (1997). Letter and category fluency in community-dwelling Canadian seniors: A comparison of normal participants to those with dementia of the Alzheimer or vascular type. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 19, 52–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crowe, S.F. (1992). Dissociation of two frontal lobe syndromes by a test of verbal fluency. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 14, 327–339.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Curtis, V.A., Bullmore, E.T., Brammer, M.J., Wright, I.C., Williams, S.C., Morris, R.G., Sharma, T.S., Murray, R.M., & McGuire, P.K. (1998). Attenuated frontal activation during a verbal fluency task in patients with schizophrenia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 155, 1056–1063.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Daigneault, S., Braun, C.M.J., & Whitaker, H.A. (1992). Early effects of normal aging on perseverative and non-perseverative prefrontal measures. Developmental Neuropsychology, 8, 89–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunn, L.M. & Dunn, L.M. (1981). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.Google Scholar
Gomez, R.G. & White, D.A. (2006). Using verbal fluency to detect very mild dementia of the Alzheimer’s type. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 21, 771–775.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henry, J.D. & Crawford, J.R. (2004). A meta-analytic review of verbal fluency performance following focal cortical lesions. Neuropsychology, 18, 284–295.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Henry, J.D., Crawford, J.R., & Phillips, L.H. (2004). Verbal fluency performance in dementia of the Alzheimer’s type: A meta-analysis. Neuropsychologia, 42, 1212–1222.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Henry, J.D. & Phillips, L.H. (2006). Covariates of production and perseveration rates on tests of phonemic, semantic, and alternating fluency in normal aging. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 13, 529–551.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirshorn, E.A. & Thompson-Schill, S.L. (2006). Role of the left inferior frontal gyrus in covert word retrieval: Neural correlates of switching during verbal fluency. Neuropsychologia, 44, 2547–2557.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kempler, D., Teng, E.L., Dick, M., Taussig, I.M., & Davis, D.S. (1998). The effects of age, education, and ethnicity on verbal fluency. Journal of International Neuropsychological Society, 4, 531–538.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kozora, E. & Cullum, C.M. (1995). Generative naming in normal aging: Total output and qualitative changes using phonemic and semantic constraints. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 9, 313–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayr, U. (2002). On the dissociation between clustering and switching in verbal fluency: Comment on Troyer, Moscovitch, Winocur, Alexander, and Stuss. Neuropsychologica, 40, 562–566.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moelter, S.T., Hill, S.K., Ragland, J.D., Lunardelli, A., Gur, R.C., Gur, R.E., & Moberg, P.J. (2001). Controlled and autonomic processing during animal word list generation in schizophrenia. Neuropsychology, 15, 502–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Monsch, A.U., Bondi, M.W., Butters, N., Paulsen, J.S., Salmon, D.P., Brugger, P., & Swenson, M.R. (1994). A comparison of category and letter fluency in Alzheimer’s disease and Huntington’s disease. Neuropsychology, 8, 25–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moscovitch, M. & Winocur, G. (1992). The neuropsychology of memory and aging. In Craik, F.I.M. & Salthouse, T.D. (Eds.), The handbook of aging and cognition (pp. 315–372). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Mummery, C., Patterson, K., Hodges, J., & Wise, R. (1996). Generating “tiger” as an animal name or a word beginning with T: Differences in brain activation. Proceedings: Biological Sciences, 263, 989–995.Google ScholarPubMed
Raz, N., Gunning-Dixon, F.M., Head, D., Kennedy, K.M., & Acker, J.D. (1998). Neuroanatomical correlates of cognitive aging: Evidence from structural magnetic resonance imaging. Neuropsychology, 12, 95–114.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rich, J.B., Troyer, A.K., Bylsma, F.W., & Brandt, J. (1999). Longitudinal analysis of phonemic clustering and switching during word-list generation in Huntington’s disease. Neuropsychology, 13, 525–531.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Robert, P.H., Lafont, V., Medecin, I., Berthert, L., Thauby, S., Baudu, C., & Darcourt, G. (1998). Clustering and switching strategies in verbal fluency tasks: Comparison between schizophrenics and healthy adults. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 4, 539–546.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rodriguez-Aranda, C. & Martinussen, M. (2006). Age-related differences in performance of phonemic verbal fluency measured by Controlled Oral Word Association Task (COWAT): A meta-analytic study. Developmental Neuropsychology, 30, 697–717.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ross, T.P., Calhoun, E., Cox, T., Wenner, C., Kono, W., & Pleasant, M. (2007). The reliability and validity of qualitative scores for the Controlled Oral Word Association Test. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 22, 475–488.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spreen, O. & Strauss, E. (1991). A compendium of neuropsychological tests. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Suhr, J.A. & Jones, R.D. (1998). Letter and semantic fluency in Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s dementias. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 13, 447–454.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tombaugh, T.N., Kozak, J., & Rees, L. (1999). Normative data stratified by age and education for two measures of verbal fluency: FAS and animal naming. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 14, 167–177.Google ScholarPubMed
Tomer, R. & Levin, B.E. (1993). Differential effects of aging on two verbal fluency tasks. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 76, 465–466.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Troster, A.I., Fields, J.A., Testa, J.A., Paul, R.H., Blanco, C.R., Hames, K.A., Salmon, D.P., & Beatty, W. (1998). Cortical and subcortical influences on clustering and switching in the performance of verbal fluency tasks. Neuropsychologia, 36, 295–304.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Troyer, A.K. (2000). Normative data for clustering and switching on verbal fluency tasks. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 22, 370–378.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Troyer, A.K., Moscovitch, M., & Winocur, G. (1997). Clustering and switching as two components of verbal fluency: Evidence from younger and older healthy adults. Neuropsychology, 11, 138–146.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Troyer, A.K., Moscovitch, M., Winocur, G., Alexander, M., & Stuss, D. (1998a). Clustering and switching on verbal fluency: The effects of focal frontal- and temporal-lobe lesions. Neuropsychologist, 36, 499–504.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Troyer, A.K., Moscovitch, M., Winocur, G., Leach, L., & Freedman, M. (1998b). Clustering and switching on verbal fluency tests in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 4, 137–143.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weiss, E., Kemmler, G., Deisenhammer, E.A., Fleischhacker, W.W., & Delazer, M. (2003a). Sex differences in cognitive functions. Personality and Individual Differences, 35, 863–875.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiss, E., Ragland, J.D., Brensinger, C.M., Bilker, W.B., Deisenhammer, E.A., & Delazer, M. (2006). Sex differences in clustering and switching verbal fluency tasks. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 12, 502–509.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weiss, E., Siedentopf, C.M., Hofer, A., Deisenhammer, E.A.,Hoptman, M.J., Kremser, C., Golaszewski, S., Felber, S., Fleischhacker, W.W. & Delazer, M. (2003b). Brain activation pattern during a verbal fluency task in healthy male and female volunteers: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Neuroscience Letter, 352, 191–194.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed