Assessment of semantic and action fluency skills among school age children ranging in AGE from 15 to 17 and adults above 18 years of age

Verbal fluency measures involving semantic and action fluency are frequently used by neuropsychologists and speech and language therapists in neuropsychological assessment. Both of these fluency measures are implemented through the words belonging to one category (either noun or verb) produced within a limited time period following certain verbal clues presented. "Breakfast Items, Famous People, Food, Beverages, Household Items" categories for semantic fluency and action fluency (saying things people do) during 1.5 minutes were assessed in this study. Furthermore, the influence of demographic (education, age and gender) and time (first, middle and last 30 seconds) variables was examined. The data gathered were analyzed through descriptive and inferential methods. 150 Turkish-speaking participants whose age ranged from 15 to 81 participated in the study. The participants were stratified into five age (15-17, 18-29, 30-44, 45-59, 60 and above) and four education (High school students, 1-8 years, 9-11 years, 12 years and above) groups. Regarding the mean values across age groups, it was observed the highest and lowest values were obtained from 15-17 and 60 and above age groups respectively. It was also seen the highest and lowest mean values were attained by the participants of 12 years and above and 1-8 years of education groups respectively in the education variable. As for the gender, female participants were observed to produce higher mean number of words in "Breakfast Items and Food" categories, which was statistically significant. The mean numbers of words produced in the first 30 seconds were higher, and besides, statistically significant differences were obtained across all time segments investigated. Finally, production differences between categories were examined and total production frequencies and first five response rates were calculated for each category.