Capturing additional information about the organization of entries in the lexicon from verbal fluency productions

J Clin Exp Neuropsychol. 2014;36(2):205-20. doi: 10.1080/13803395.2013.878689. Epub 2014 Feb 10.

Abstract

Troyer and colleagues [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(1), 138-146] developed a seminal method to measure clustering and switching behaviors during verbal fluency (VF) productions. We sought to expand the reach of their system by modifying the scoring rules. Compared to the Troyer system, our modifications yield comparable estimates of interrater reliability and similar patterns of correlation with demographic characteristics for both clustering and switching in healthy adults. However, two objective measures of word relatedness (interword interval timing and latent semantic analysis) confirm that our revisions capture additional information about the organization of entries in the lexical network.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study
  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Neuropsychological Tests / standards*
  • Neuropsychological Tests / statistics & numerical data
  • Psycholinguistics / instrumentation
  • Psycholinguistics / methods
  • Psycholinguistics / standards
  • Psychomotor Performance / physiology*
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Semantics
  • Young Adult