Landon Center on Aging, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, MO, USA.
Neuropsychology. 2011 Mar;25(2):210-25. doi: 10.1037/a0021531.
Verbal fluency measures are frequently part of batteries designed to assess executive function (EF), but are also used to assess semantic processing ability or word knowledge. The goal of the present study was to identify the cognitive components underlying fluency performance.
Healthy young and older adults, adults with Parkinson's disease, and adults with Alzheimer's disease performed letter, category, and action fluency tests. Performance was assessed in terms of number of items generated, clustering, and the time course of output. A series of neuropsychological assessments were also administered to index verbal ability, working memory, EF, and processing speed as correlates of fluency performance.
Findings indicated that regardless of the particular performance measure, young adults performed the best and adults with Alzheimer's disease performed most poorly, with healthy older adults and adults with Parkinson's disease performing at intermediate levels. The exception was the action fluency task, where adults with Parkinson's disease performed most poorly. The time course of fluency performance was characterized in terms of slope and intercept parameters and related to neuropsychological constructs. Speed of processing was found to be the best predictor of performance, rather than the efficiency of EF or semantic knowledge.
Together, these findings demonstrate that the pattern of fluency performance looks generally the same regardless of how performance is measured. In addition, the primary role of processing speed in performance suggests that the use of fluency tasks as measures of EF or verbal ability warrants reexamination.
流畅性测验通常是用于评估执行功能（EF）的测试组合的一部分，但也用于评估语义加工能力或词汇知识。本研究的目的是确定流畅性表现背后的认知成分。
健康的年轻和老年成年人、帕金森病成年人和阿尔茨海默病成年人执行字母、类别和动作流畅性测试。根据生成的项目数量、聚类和输出的时间进程来评估表现。还进行了一系列神经心理学评估，以索引言语能力、工作记忆、EF 和处理速度作为流畅性表现的相关因素。
研究结果表明，无论特定的表现衡量标准如何，年轻成年人表现最好，阿尔茨海默病成年人表现最差，健康的老年成年人和帕金森病成年人表现居中。动作流畅性任务除外，在该任务中，帕金森病成年人表现最差。流畅性表现的时间进程特征在于斜率和截距参数，并与神经心理学结构相关。处理速度被发现是表现的最佳预测因素，而不是 EF 或语义知识的效率。
总之，这些发现表明，无论如何衡量表现，流畅性表现的模式看起来大致相同。此外，处理速度在表现中的主要作用表明，将流畅性任务用作 EF 或言语能力的衡量标准值得重新考虑。
