Verbal Fluency Test in Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders

• Main Authors: Esteban Vaucheret Paz, Celeste Puga, Christy Ekonen, Paula Pintos, Isabel Lascombes, Soledad De Vita, Mariana Leist, Mariela Corleto, María José García Basalo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Thieme Medical and Scientific Publishers Pvt. Ltd. 2020-01-01
• Series: Journal of Neurosciences in Rural Practice
• Subjects: neuropsychological test; verbal fluency test; language disorders; executive function
• Online Access: http://www.thieme-connect.de/DOI/DOI?10.1055/s-0039-3400347

Background The verbal fluency task is a widely used psychometric test to account for cognitive functions, particularly, verbal and executive functions. Being an easy and fast test to administer, it is a good neuropsychological tool in low technology environments. Our objective was to analyze the performance in verbal fluency of Spanish-speaking children with neurodevelopmental disorders. Methods We performed a retrospective cross-sectional study to analyze the performance of children who had undergone a verbal fluency test in a neuropsychological assessment. Results We included 115 participants. There were 41 (35.65%) participants with low intellectual performance (LIP), 63 (54.78%) with attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), and 11(9.57%) participants with dyslexia. Participants with LIP showed lower phonological and semantic fluency scores than participants with ADHD, and a lower performance in semantic fluency than the dyslexia group. The probability of having LIP was 6.12 times greater when somebody had a scale score lower than 7 in the phonological task and it was 7.9 times greater when the scale score was lower than 7 in the semantic task. Conclusion There was a direct relationship between Full Scale Intelligence Quotient and verbal fluency test performance, the latter being a brief and effective neuropsychological test that can reveal deficit not only in executive functions and verbal abilities but also detect LIP.