Word fluency measures: Normative values for younger and older adults

Word fluency measures are timed word association tasks frequently used by psychologists and speech-language pathologists in their assessment of the communication problems associated with brain injury. The purpose of this study was to provide normative data, particularly for comparison with traumatically brain-injured or other neurologically impaired patients. The test was administered to two groups of healthy adults, ages 16 through 25 and 60 through 87. Differences in categorical versus letter stimuli, written versus spoken performance, older versus younger gender, and education level were examined. Younger subjects produced significantly more words than older subjects. Subjects without a high school degree produced significantly fewer words than subjects with college education. Subjects in both age groups generated significantly more words in response to categories (food and animals) than letters (P and T), and in response to spoken than written formats.