Tests of Verbal Fluency, Czech Normative Study in Older Patients

Aim:The aim of the study was to report normative data on letter (LF; letters K,P,S) and semantic fluency (SF; animals and vegetables). introduction: Verbal fluency (VF) is one of the most frequently used neuropsychological methods for the assessment of cognitive performance in clinical and experimental neuropsychology. However, representative normative data for the Czech population of older and very old adults are so far lacking. Methods: We administered VF as part of neuropsychological battery to 540 (292 women, 248 men) healthy older adults (60-96 years of age). In LF, the letters K,P,S and their total score were used as analogous to the original Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT/FAS). In SF, we evaluated performance in two categories - animals and vegetables. Results: Age was significantly (p < 0.001) related to a sum of K + P + S (r = -0.236) as well as animals (r = -0.359) and vegetables (r = -0.264). However, the association was moderate. Education was also moderately related (p < 0.001) to the sum of K + P + S (r = 0.297) and animals (r = 0.357). However, we did not find a significant relationship between age and vegetables (r = 0.028; p = 0.523). Vegetables were also the only measure that showed highly significant sex differences (p < 0.001). We present normative Czech data for 60-75, 70-85 and 80-96 age groups. Conclusion:The results of our study confirm a significant moderate influence of age and education (with the exception of vegetables for the latter) on all VF measures. There were highly significant sex differences in the vegetable category.