Assessment of semanti̇c fluency skills in preschoolers aging from 4-6

Verbal fluency measures are widely used not only in the field of speech and language therapy to evaluate language skills, but in neuropsychology to diagnose cognitive impairments. As a subcategory of verbal fluency test, semantic fluency measures require participants to generate as many words as they can according to a given category within a resricted time. Along with the assessment of semantic fluency skills in preschoolers, the influence of variables- age, gender and educational backround of mothers- is examined in this study. To this purpose, the categories of ' Animals, Fruits and Vegatables, Colors, Beverages, Clothes, Body Parts and Furnitures' are used. Participants of the study include 84 preschoolers with the ages ranging from 4 to 6. Participants are separeted into 3 age groups (4,5 and 6) and 3 education groups according to educational backround of mothers (low, intermediate and high). Results of the study indicated that the semantic fluency performance of the children increased with the age. However gender groups weren't significantly differed by their performance on the semantic fluency measures. In respect to education variable, it was found that children whose mothers are involved in the low level of education group attained the highest mean values. The analysis of the data showed that participants had the highest number of total words in the category of 'Body Part' and the highest number of different words in the category of 'Animals'. Ultimately, total production frequencies and first response rates were estimated over the words produced in seven categories.