BACKGROUND Word retrieval during verbal fluency tasks invokes both automatic and controlled cognitive processes. A distinction has been made between the generation of words clusters and switches between such clusters on verbal fluency tasks. Clusters, defined by the reporting of contiguous words that constitute semantic or phonemic subcategories, are thought to reflect relatively automatic proc...

OBJECTIVE A significant impact of limited schooling and illiteracy has been found on numerous neuropsychological tests, which may partly be due to the ecological relevance of the tests in the context of illiteracy. The aims of this study were to compare the performance of illiterate and literate immigrants on two semantic criteria for the verbal fluency test, and examine the influence of accult...

Depression in Parkinson's disease (PD) is frequently associated with executive deficits, which can influence nonliteral comprehension and lexical access. This study explores whether depressive symptoms in PD modulate verbal fluency and nonliteral language comprehension. Twelve individuals with PD without depressive symptoms, 13 with PD and depressive symptoms (PDDSs), and 13 healthy controls co...

We present a system for automated phonetic clustering analysis of cognitive tests of phonemic verbal fluency, on which one must name words starting with a specific letter (e.g., ‘F’) for one minute. Test responses are typically subjected to manual phonetic clustering analysis that is labor-intensive and subject to inter-rater variability. Our system provides an automated alternative. In a pilot...

It has been well documented that education influences the individual's performance on category fluency tasks but it is still unclear how this effect may differ across the different types of category tasks (i.e., animals, fruits, vegetables and clothing). This study aims (1) to analyze the effect of the level of education on four different types of category fluency tasks among elder Hispanic Ame...

This study assessed the degree to which anxiety and depression symptoms are associated with memory and executive functioning among community-dwelling older adults (N=120; M age=74.9 years, SD=7.2 years; 62% women). Participants completed the Geriatric Anxiety Scale, Geriatric Depression Scale, Comorbidity Index, California Verbal Learning Test, Second Edition (CVLT-II), and the Trail Making, Ve...

OBJECTIVE To assess the language and verbal fluency performance in aneurismal SAH pre- and post-surgery in patients caused by an aneurysm of the anterior communicating artery (AcomA), left middle cerebral artery (L-MCA) and left posterior comunicating artery (L-PcomA). METHODS Assessment in 79 patients with SAH, on two occasions: pre- and post surgical treatment. They were divided into three ...

The main goal of this study was to produce adjusted normative data for the Portuguese population on two verbal fluency measures: the semantic fluency test (animals category) and the phonemic fluency test (letters M, R, and P). The study included 950 community-dwelling individuals (624 women and 326 men) aged between 18 and 98 (mean = 57.8, SD = 19.0), who had educational backgrounds ranging fro...

This study aimed to assess the severity and specificity of cognitive impairments that affect individuals with deficit versus non-deficit schizophrenia. We compared 26 patients with the deficit subtype of schizophrenia (SZ-D) and 79 with non-deficit schizophrenia (SZ-ND) to 316 healthy adults (NC). All study participants completed a battery with 19 individual cognitive measures. After adjusting ...

OBJECTIVES To assess the predictive value of neuropsychologic profiles, at diagnosis, for mortality in incident Alzheimer disease (AD). BACKGROUND Rate of AD progression varies significantly across individuals for reasons that are not well understood. Several studies have linked rapid decline with disproportionately impaired executive functioning, presumably reflecting greater impairment of f...