Adaptation and usage of the verbal fluency test in the world

• Main Authors: Monika Ponichtera-Kasprzykowska, Tomasz Sobów
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Medical Communications Sp. z o.o. 2014-09-01
• Series: Psychiatria i Psychologia Kliniczna
• Subjects: FAS test; letter fluency; normalization
• Online Access: http://www.psychiatria.com.pl/index.php/wydawnictwa/2014-vol-14-no-3/adaptation-and-usage-of-the-verbal-fluency-test-in-the-world?aid=395

Aim: The verbal fluency test is one of the best known and useful neuropsychological tools based on the language functions diagnosis. The study was aimed at analysis and evaluation of adaptation and use of this test in the world, with a special emphasis on the situation in Poland. Material and methods: The research material was completed due to a survey of electronic databases. Some of the studies were singled out manually. Among other, the following key words were used: verbal fluency, adaptation of verbal fluency test, FAS, COWAT (Controlled Oral Word Association Test). Finally, included into the basic analysis were 33 research articles from 23 countries. Additionally, the detailed evaluation included 18 Polish tests, using the verbal fluency test. Results: The greatest group among the analysed studies was that of standardization studies. Far less frequently included is complete linguistic adaptation. A high freedom is observed within selection of the phonetic variant letters, even among researchers from one country. Conclusions: Basically, the use of the verbal fluency test in Poland does not diverge from international tendencies. There is a considerable diversity as regards the way of adaptation of the tool for the demand of a given population and within it. Because of too few comparative data within the applied phonetic variants of the test, we cannot explicitly indicate a predominance of original version of the tool or simultaneously applied lists of letters.