Verbal fluency tasks are widely applied in a variety of languages, but whether the quality and quantity of responses are comparable across structurally different writing systems is debatable. For example, since there are no letters in a logographic, non-alphabetic language such as Chinese, the mechanisms speakers use to generate a list of words in a letter fluency task might be structurally different than those used by speakers of alphabetic languages. In this study, we investigated lexical retrieval strategies and approaches in letter and category fluency tasks among monolingual Mandarin speakers compared to monolingual English speakers. We found that the responses of Mandarin speakers are both qualitatively and quantitatively different in letter fluency, and qualitatively different in category fluency. These results suggest that differences in task completion among non-English-speaking populations are important to consider when using this extensively utilised cognitive and linguistic measure in research and clinic.
AlladiS.ArnoldR.MitchellJ.NestorP. J.HodgesJ. R. (2006). Mild cognitive impairment: Applicability of research criteria in a memory clinic and characterization of cognitive profile. Psychological Medicine, 36, 507–515.
2.
AndersonR. C.LiW.KuY.-M.ShuH.WuN. (2003). Use of partial information in learning to read Chinese characters. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 52–57.
3.
AuriacombeS.LechevallierN.AmievaH.HarstonS.RaouxN.DartiguesJ. F. (2006). A longitudinal study of quantitative and qualitative features of category verbal fluency in incident Alzheimer’s disease subjects: Results from the PAQUID study. Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, 21, 260–266.
4.
AzumaT.BaylesK. A.CruzR. E.TomoedaC. K.WoodJ. A.McGeaghA.MontgomeryE. B. (1997). Comparing the difficulty of letter, semantic, and name fluency tasks for nor- mal elderly and patients with Parkinson’s disease. Neuropsychology, 11, 488–497.
5.
Benito-CuadradoM. M.Esteba-CastilloS.BöhmP.Cejudo-BolívarJ.Pena-CasanovaJ. (2002). Semantic verbal fluency in animals: A normative and predictive study in a Spanish population. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 24, 1117–1122.
6.
CapitaniE.LaiaconaM.BarbarottoR. (1999). Gender affects word retrieval in certain categories in semantic fluency tasks. Cortex, 35, 273–278.
7.
ChanA. S.PoonM. W. (1999). Performance of 7- to 95-year old individuals in a Chinese version of the category fluency test. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 5, 525–533.
8.
ChenX.HaoM.GevaE.ZhuJ.ShuH. (2009). The role of compound awareness in Chinese children’s vocabulary acquisition and character reading. Reading and Writing, 22, 615–631.
9.
DaiJ. X. (1998). Syntactical, phonological and morphological words in Chinese. In PackardJ. L. (Ed.), New approaches to Chinese word formation (pp. 103-133). Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.
10.
DeFrancisJ. (1984). The Chinese language: Fact and fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
11.
FeldmanL. B.SiokW. W. T. (1999). Semantic radicals in phonetic compounds: Implications for visual character recognition in Chinese. In WangJ.InhoffA. W.ChenH. C. (Eds.), Reading Chinese script: A cognitive analysis (pp. 19–35). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
12.
FlowersK. A.RobertsonC.SheridanM. R. (1995). Some characteristics of word fluency in Parkinson’s disease. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 9, 33–46.
13.
HenryJ. D.CrawfordJ. R. (2004). Verbal fluency deficits in Parkinson’s disease: A meta-analysis. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 10, 608–622.
14.
HenryJ. D.CrawfordJ. R.PhillipsL. H. (2004). Verbal fluency performance in dementia of the Alzheimer’s type: A meta-analysis. Neuropsychologia, 42, 1212–1222.
15.
KavéG. (2005). Phonemic fluency, semantic fluency, and difference scores: Normative data for adult Hebrew speakers. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 27, 690–699.
16.
KemplerD.TengE. L.DickM.TaussigM.DavisD. S. (1998). The effects of age, education, and ethnicity on verbal fluency. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 4, 531–538.
17.
KimB. J.LeeC. S.OhB. H.HongC. H.LeeK. S.SonS. J., . . . KimK. W. (2013). A normative study of lexical verbal fluency in an educationally-diverse elderly population. Psychiatry Investigation, 10, 346–351.
18.
LeeT. M. C.YuenK. S. L.ChanC. C. H. (2002). Normative data for neuropsychological measures of fluency, attention, and memory measures for Hong Kong Chinese. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 24, 615–632.
19.
LezakM. D.HowiesonD. B.LoringD. W. (2004). Neuropsychological assessment (4th ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
20.
LiC. N.ThompsonS. A. (1989). Mandarin Chinese: A functional reference grammar. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
21.
LonieJ. A.HerrmannL. L.TierneyK. M.DonagheyC.O’CarrollR.LeeA.EbmeierK. P. (2009). Lexical and semantic fluency discrepancy scores in aMCI and early Alzheimer’s disease. Journal of Neuropsychology, 3, 79–92.
22.
McBride-ChangC.CheungH.ChowB. W.-Y.ChowC. S.-L.ChoiL. (2006). Metalinguistic skills and vocabulary knowledge in Chinese (L1) and English (L2). Reading and Writing, 19, 695–716.
23.
MurphyK. J.RichJ. B.TroyerA. K. (2006). Verbal fluency patterns in amnestic mild cognitive impairment are characteristic of Alzheimer’s type dementia. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 12, 570–574.
24.
ObesoI.CasabonaE.BringasM. L.AlvarezL.JahanshahiM. (2012). Semantic and phonemic verbal fluency in Parkinson’s disease: Influence of clinical and demographic variables. Behavioral Neurology, 25, 111–118.
25.
PekkalaS.GoralM.HyunJ.OblerL. K.ErkinjunttiT.AlbertM. L. (2009). Semantic verbal fluency in two contrasting languages. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 23, 431–445.
26.
QuinnC.ElmanL.McCluskeyL.HoskinsK.KaramC.WooJ. H., . . . GrossmanM. (2012). Frontal lobe abnormalities on MRS correlate with poor letter fluency in ALS. Neurology, 79, 583–588.
27.
RobertsP. M.Le DorzeG. (1997). Semantic organization, strategy use, and productivity in bilingual semantic verbal fluency. Brain and Language, 59, 412–449.
28.
RosselliM.ArdilaA.SalvatierraJ.MarquezM.MatosL.WeekesV. A. (2002). A cross-linguistic comparison of verbal fluency tests. International Journal of Neuroscience, 112, 759–776.
29.
ShaoZ.JanseE.VisserK.MeyerA. S. (2014). What do verbal fluency tasks measure? Predictors of verbal fluency performance in older adults. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 772.
30.
SnodgrassJ. G.TsivkinS. (1995). Organization of the bilingual lexicon: Categorical versus alphabetic cuing in Russian-English bilinguals. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 24, 145–163.
31.
SumiyoshiaC.SumiyoshiT.MatsuiM.NoharaS.YamashitaI.KurachiM.NiwaS. (2003). Effect of orthography on the verbal fluency performance in schizophrenia: Examination using Japanese patients. Schizophrenia Research, 69, 15–22.
32.
TroyerA. K.MoscovitchM.WinocurG. (1997). Clustering and switching as two components of verbal fluency: Evidence from younger and older healthy adults. Neuropsychology, 11, 138–146.
33.
Van der ElstW.van BoxtelM. P.Van BreukelenG. J.JollesJ. (2006). Normative data for the animal, profession and letter M naming verbal fluency tests for Dutch speaking participants and the effects of age, education, and sex. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 12, 80–89.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
