Chami Sara, Munro Natalie, Docking Kimberley, McGregor Karla, Arciuli Joanne, Baker Elise, Heard Rob
a Discipline of Speech Pathology , The University of Sydney , Lidcombe , Australia.
b Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders and the DeLTA Center , University of Iowa , Iowa City , IA , USA , and.
Int J Speech Lang Pathol. 2018 Apr;20(2):262-273. doi: 10.1080/17549507.2016.1276214. Epub 2017 Jan 13.
Verbal fluency tests are often used as part of an assessment battery to investigate children's lexical knowledge as well as executive function skills. To date, however, issues surrounding consistency of measurement cloud comparisons across studies, with the developmental performance of Australian-English speaking children also currently lacking. This study tracked verbal fluency development as measured by two semantic fluency tasks that included coding of fluency, clustering and switching type responses.
Participants included 355 typically developing Australian-English speaking children (4-10 years) and 46 young adults. Total fluency was determined by the number of words produced for each category (Animals or Food), minus repetitions and rule violations. Semantic clusters (words generated within a subcategory) were coded while switches between single words or subcategories were differentiated and coded as either hard or cluster switches.
Fluency showed consistent improvement over age. Cluster Switches and Hard Switches showed some evidence of a plateau in performance relative to fluency, but in opposite direction. Other measures showed no strong trends over age. Results were similar for both semantic categories.
Our results highlight the rich information available within a semantic fluency task and the importance of differentiating hard and cluster switches in paediatric samples.
言语流畅性测试常被用作评估组合的一部分，以调查儿童的词汇知识以及执行功能技能。然而，迄今为止，围绕测量一致性的问题给跨研究比较带来了困扰，目前也缺乏以澳大利亚英语为母语儿童的发育表现数据。本研究通过两项语义流畅性任务追踪言语流畅性发展，这两项任务包括对流畅性、聚类和转换类型反应进行编码。
参与者包括355名发育正常的以澳大利亚英语为母语的儿童（4至10岁）和46名年轻人。总流畅性由每个类别（动物或食物）产出的单词数量决定，减去重复和违反规则的情况。对语义聚类（在一个子类别中生成的单词）进行编码，同时区分单个单词或子类别之间的转换，并将其编码为硬转换或聚类转换。
流畅性随年龄增长持续提高。聚类转换和硬转换相对于流畅性表现出一些趋于平稳的迹象，但方向相反。其他指标在年龄增长过程中未显示出强烈趋势。两个语义类别结果相似。
我们的结果突出了语义流畅性任务中可用的丰富信息，以及在儿科样本中区分硬转换和聚类转换的重要性。
