The cognitive abilities associated with verbal fluency task performance differ across fluency variants and age groups in healthy young and old adults

Abstract

Our findings highlight that both lower and higher order cognitive skills contribute to verbal fluency tasks; however, these contributions vary considerably across fluency variants and age groups. The heterogeneity of cognitive determinants of verbal fluency, across variants and age, may explain why older people performed less proficiently on semantic and excluded letter fluency tasks while no age effects were found for phonemic and alternating fluency. Interpretation of verbal fluency performances need to be tailored according to which verbal fluency variant and age group are used.