Scheuringer Andrea, Wittig Ramona, Pletzer Belinda
Department of Psychology, Paris-Lodron University Salzburg, Hellbrunnerstraße 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria.
Center of Neurocognitive Research, Paris-Lodron University Salzburg, Hellbrunnerstraße 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria.
Cogn Process. 2017 Nov;18(4):407-417. doi: 10.1007/s10339-017-0801-1. Epub 2017 Apr 1.
Sex differences in verbal fluency performance and strategies are highly controversial, nevertheless suggesting a slight female advantage at least for phonemic fluency. A tendency of increased clustering of words into phonemic and semantic subcategories in men and increased switching between those categories in women has been suggested. In spatial tasks, it has been demonstrated that changes in instructions favoring a certain cognitive strategy can alter sex differences in performance. Such an approach has, however, not been attempted previously with verbal tasks. In the present investigation, 19 women in their luteal cycle phase and 23 men performed a phonemic and a semantic fluency task with three different instructions, one neutral, one emphasizing the clustering, and one emphasizing the switching of words. While under neutral instructions no sex differences were observed in verbal fluency performance and strategies, sex differences in switching and overall performance were observed in semantic fluency with an instruction requiring a switching strategy. Furthermore, correlation analyses suggested that the importance of strategies for overall performance differed between women and men. While only switching, but not clustering was related to overall verbal fluency performance in all tasks under all instructions, this relationship was driven by women in the phonemic task, but by men in the semantic task. These results highlight the importance of a consistent methodology in sex difference research. Slight variations in instructions may in part explain inconsistencies regarding sex differences in verbal fluency between previous studies.
言语流畅性表现及策略方面的性别差异极具争议，不过这表明至少在音素流畅性上女性稍有优势。有人提出，男性存在将单词更多地聚类为音素和语义子类别的倾向，而女性则有在这些类别之间更多切换的倾向。在空间任务中，已经证明，偏向某种认知策略的指令变化会改变表现上的性别差异。然而，此前尚未有人在言语任务中尝试过这种方法。在本研究中，19名处于黄体期的女性和23名男性进行了一项音素和语义流畅性任务，有三种不同的指令，一种中性，一种强调聚类，一种强调单词切换。在中性指令下，言语流畅性表现及策略方面未观察到性别差异，但在要求切换策略的指令下，语义流畅性的切换及整体表现上观察到了性别差异。此外，相关性分析表明，策略对整体表现的重要性在女性和男性之间有所不同。虽然在所有指令下的所有任务中，只有切换而非聚类与整体言语流畅性表现相关，但在音素任务中这种关系由女性驱动，而在语义任务中由男性驱动。这些结果凸显了在性别差异研究中采用一致方法的重要性。指令上的细微差异可能部分解释了以往研究在言语流畅性性别差异方面的不一致之处。
