Verbal Fluency Test: normative data and evolutionary development in elementary students

Abstract

The aim of this study was the standardization, and analysis of the developmental profile of two tasks for the assessment of verbal fluency (semantic and phonological), in a large sample of Spanish-speaking child population. We analyzed the development of both tasks within a context of cross-sectional design. A selected a sample of 1.032 subjects aged between 6 years and 3 months to 12 years and four months between first and sixth grade were of primary education. The semantic verbal fluency was evaluated with the task ‘animals in 1 minute’ and the phonologic verbal fluency was evaluated with ‘F, A, M’ in a minute for each one’. The results show a progressive improvement in performance as a function of age in both tests. We present tables of means, standard deviations and percentiles for different age groups.