Department of Psychiatry.
Department of Psychology.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2019 Dec;148(12):2104-2119. doi: 10.1037/xge0000589. Epub 2019 Mar 21.
The relationship of verbal fluency to executive functions (EFs) remains somewhat unclear. Verbal fluency is sometimes considered an EF ability, but is not often included in the same models as other well-studied EFs (inhibition, shifting, and working memory updating). We examined the associations between verbal fluency and EFs at 2 ages with the unity/diversity model, which includes common and domain-specific EF factors. Participants were 813 adolescent twins from the Colorado Longitudinal Twin Sample (mean age 17 years) and 1,290 middle-aged twins from the Vietnam Era Twin Study of Aging (mean age 56 years) who completed multiple measures of EFs, verbal fluency, vocabulary, and nonverbal cognitive ability. Results revealed that, in both samples, a General Fluency factor (i.e., comprising both phonemic and semantic fluency measures) was associated with the Common EF factor, but also with variance unique to working memory updating, working memory span, and set-shifting. In adolescents, semantic fluency also had unique associations with shifting beyond its shared variance with phonemic fluency and Common EF. After accounting for EFs and other cognitive abilities, there were unique genetic and environmental influences on the General Fluency and Semantic-Specific latent factors. These results suggest that verbal fluency ability may best be viewed as an amalgamation of general EF variance (i.e., Common EF ability), variance shared with other EFs (e.g., Updating-Specific ability), and multiple sources of unique genetic/environmental variance (i.e., General Fluency and Semantic-Specific abilities). These associations between verbal fluency and EFs generalize to populations that differ in age by approximately 40 years. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
言语流畅性与执行功能（EFs）之间的关系尚不清楚。言语流畅性有时被认为是一种 EF 能力，但通常不包括在与其他经过充分研究的 EF（抑制、转换和工作记忆更新）相同的模型中。我们使用统一/多样性模型，在 2 个年龄段检查了言语流畅性与 EF 之间的关联，该模型包括共同和特定领域的 EF 因素。参与者为来自科罗拉多纵向双胞胎样本（平均年龄 17 岁）的 813 名青少年双胞胎和来自越南时代双胞胎衰老研究（平均年龄 56 岁）的 1290 名中年双胞胎，他们完成了多项 EF、言语流畅性、词汇和非言语认知能力的测量。结果表明，在两个样本中，一般流畅性因子（即，包括语音和语义流畅性测量）与共同 EF 因子相关，但也与工作记忆更新、工作记忆广度和转换的独特方差相关。在青少年中，语义流畅性除了与语音流畅性和共同 EF 的共享方差相关外，还与转换具有独特的关联。在考虑到 EF 和其他认知能力后，一般流畅性和语义特定潜在因子具有独特的遗传和环境影响。这些结果表明，言语流畅性能力最好被视为一般 EF 方差（即共同 EF 能力）、与其他 EF 共享的方差（例如更新特定能力）和多个独特遗传/环境方差来源（即一般流畅性和语义特定能力）的混合体。这些言语流畅性与 EF 之间的关联适用于年龄相差约 40 年的人群。（PsycINFO 数据库记录（c）2019 APA，保留所有权利）。
