Smit Annelot P, Beran Magdalena, Twait Emma L, Geerlings Mirjam I, Vonk Jet M J
Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht and Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Amsterdam UMC, Department of General Practice, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Front Psychol. 2023 Sep 22;14:1227053. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1227053. eCollection 2023.
Semantic fluency is a prominent neuropsychological task, typically administered within the category 'animals'. With the increasing development of novel item-level metrics of semantic fluency, a concern around the validity of item-level analyses could be that personal background factors (e.g., hobbies like birdwatching or fishing) may disproportionally influence performance. We analyzed animal fluency performance at the item level and investigated the prevalence of individuals with abundant knowledge in specific classes of animals (e.g., birds, fish, insects) and the relationship of such knowledge with personal background factors and other cognitive tasks (episodic memory and executive functioning).
Participants included 736 Dutch middle-aged to older adults from the SMART-MR cohort (mean age 58 ± 9.4 years, 18% women). Individuals were asked to name as many animals as possible for 2 min. Number of people with abundant animal class knowledge was calculated for the ability to recall a series of minimum ≥5 and up to ≥15 animals within a specific class with at most one interruption by an animal from another class. Subsequent analyses to investigate relationships of abundant class knowledge with sociodemographic characteristics (-tests and chi-square tests) and cognitive performance (linear regressions) were performed for a cut-off of ≥10 animals within a specific class (90th percentile), with a sensitivity analysis for ≥7 animals (67th percentile).
A total of 416 (56.2%) participants recalled a series of ≥5 animals from a specific class, 245 (33.3%) participants recalled ≥7, 78 (10.6%) participants recalled ≥10, and 8 (1.1%) participants recalled ≥15. Those who recalled a series of at least 10 animals within a class were older, more often men, and more often retired than those who did not. Moreover, they had a higher total score on animal fluency, letter fluency (i.e., executive functioning), and episodic memory tasks compared to those who did not.
Our results suggest that the benefit of abundant animal class knowledge gained by personal background does not disproportionally influence animal fluency performance as individuals with such knowledge also performed better on other cognitive tasks unrelated to abundant knowledge of animal classes.
语义流畅性是一项重要的神经心理学任务，通常在“动物”类别中进行。随着语义流畅性新的项目级指标的不断发展，对项目级分析有效性的一个担忧可能是个人背景因素（如观鸟或钓鱼等爱好）可能会对表现产生不成比例的影响。我们在项目层面分析了动物流畅性表现，并调查了在特定动物类别（如鸟类、鱼类、昆虫）中有丰富知识的个体的比例，以及这种知识与个人背景因素和其他认知任务（情景记忆和执行功能）之间的关系。
参与者包括来自SMART-MR队列的736名荷兰中年及老年人（平均年龄58±9.4岁，18%为女性）。要求参与者在2分钟内尽可能多地说出动物的名称。计算具有丰富动物类别知识的人数，即能够在特定类别中回忆起一系列至少≥5只且最多≥15只动物，且最多被来自另一类别的一只动物打断一次的能力。随后，针对特定类别中≥10只动物（第90百分位数）的临界值，进行分析以研究丰富类别知识与社会人口学特征（t检验和卡方检验）以及认知表现（线性回归）之间的关系，并对≥7只动物（第67百分位数）进行敏感性分析。
共有416名（56.2%）参与者从特定类别中回忆起一系列≥5只动物，245名（33.3%）参与者回忆起≥7只，78名（10.6%）参与者回忆起≥10只，8名（1.1%）参与者回忆起≥15只。在一个类别中回忆起一系列至少10只动物的人比没有回忆起的人年龄更大，男性更多，退休的也更多。此外，与没有回忆起的人相比，他们在动物流畅性、字母流畅性（即执行功能）和情景记忆任务上的总分更高。
我们的结果表明，个人背景所获得的丰富动物类别知识的益处并不会不成比例地影响动物流畅性表现，因为拥有此类知识的个体在与动物类别丰富知识无关的其他认知任务上也表现得更好。
