scholarly journals Semantic, phonologic, and verb fluency in Huntington's disease

2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariana Jardim Azambuja ◽  
Monica Santoro Haddad ◽  
Marcia Radanovic ◽  
Egberto Reis Barbosa ◽  
Letícia Lessa Mansur
Keyword(s):  
Executive Functioning ◽  
Huntington's Disease ◽  
Huntington’S Disease ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Verbal Fluency ◽  
Frontal Lobe Dysfunction ◽  
Semantic Fluency ◽  
Verbal Fluency Task ◽  
Usual Evaluation ◽  
Fluency Task

Abstract Verbal fluency tasks have been identified as important indicators of executive functioning impairment in patients with frontal lobe dysfunction. Although the usual evaluation of this ability considers phonologic and semantic criteria, there is some evidence that fluency of verbs would be more sensitive in disclosing frontostriatal physiopathology since frontal regions primarily mediate retrieval of verbs. Huntington's disease usually affects these circuitries. Objective: To compare three types of verbal fluency task in the assessment of frontal-striatal dysfunction in HD subjects. Methods: We studied 26 Huntington's disease subjects, divided into two subgroups: mild (11) and moderate (15) along with 26 normal volunteers matched for age, gender and schooling, for three types of verbal fluency: phonologic fluency (F-A-S), semantic fluency and fluency of verbs. Results: Huntington's disease subjects showed a significant reduction in the number of words correctly generated in the three tasks when compared to the normal group. Both controls and Huntington's disease subjects showed a similar pattern of decreasing task performance with the greatest number of words being generated by semantic elicitation followed by verbs and lastly phonologic criteria. We did not find greater production of verbs compared with F-A-S and semantic conditions. Moreover, the fluency of verbs distinguished only the moderate group from controls. Conclusion: Our results indicated that phonologic and semantic fluency can be used to evaluate executive functioning, proving more sensitive than verb fluency. However, it is important to point out that the diverse presentations of Huntington's disease means that an extended sample is necessary for more consistent analysis of this issue.

scholarly journals Perseverative Behavior on Verbal Fluency Task in Patients with Huntington’s Disease: a Retrospective Study on a Large Patient Sample

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 358-364
Author(s):  
Natascia De Lucia ◽  
Silvio Peluso ◽  
Alessandro Roca ◽  
Giuseppe De Michele ◽  
Luigi Trojano ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Huntington's Disease ◽  
Huntington’S Disease ◽  
Verbal Fluency ◽  
Functional Independence ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Verbal Responses ◽  
Verbal Fluency Task ◽  
Large Patient ◽  
Perseverative Errors ◽  
Fluency Task

Abstract Objective Patients with Huntington’s disease (HD) may show impairments of frontal cortical–subcortical circuits with difficulties on cognitive flexibility tasks. One marker of poor flexibility is “perseveration” behavior, which refers to inappropriate and involuntary production of iterative responses not adequate to the current task demands. This study explored frequency, type, and possible cognitive mechanisms of verbal perseverations in a large sample of HD patients. Method A sample of 128 patients with HD underwent phonological and category verbal fluency tests to assess perseverative errors, within a wide neuropsychological, psychopathological, motor, and functional assessment. Results Perseverative errors in verbal fluency task occurred in 89 (69.5%) patients. Patients showing perseverations scored significantly lower than patients without perseverations on tasks tapping executive and motor functions and on functional independence scales. Logistic regression analysis revealed a significant independent association of verbal perseverations with scores on Trail Making Test only. Conclusions: Verbal perseverations are frequent in HD patients and are likely related with impairments of attentional switching and working memory, hampering tracking of verbal responses already produced. Perseverative behavior may serve as a useful clinical marker of cognitive and functional impairment in patients with HD.

scholarly journals Characteristics of Clustering and Switching in Verbal Fluency according to Healthy Elderly Group

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 630-640
Author(s):  
Juyeong Kim ◽  
Hyunjoo Choi
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Verbal Fluency ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Semantic Fluency ◽  
Verbal Fluency Task ◽  
Healthy Elderly ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Phonemic Verbal Fluency ◽  
Fluency Task

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of clusters and switches through verbal fluency tasks by different age groups among the elderly.Methods: Ninety-four healthy elderly adults participated in this study. The verbal fluency task consisted of semantic verbal fluency and phonemic verbal fluency. The categories of ‘animal’ and ‘supermarket’ were used for semantic fluency, and the categories ‘/k/’, ‘/o/’ and ‘/s/’ were used for phonemic fluency.Results: First, there was a significant difference between the age groups. The number of correct responses in the verbal fluency task decreased as age increased. Second, the mean cluster size for verbal fluency did not show a significant difference among groups in tasks of semantic and phonemic verbal fluency. Third, the number of switches showed a significant difference between groups in semantic and phonemic verbal fluency. In the post-analysis results of semantic fluency, a significant difference was found in the category of ‘animals’ between the young-old and old-old age group, and a significant difference was found in the number of switches in the category of ‘supermarket’ between the middle-old and old-old age group. Finally, the semantic fluency task showed the highest frequency of perseverative error, and the phonemic fluency task showed the highest frequency of other errors.Conclusion: These results of this study are meaningful in investigating characteristics of cluster and switch as well as the performance of correct rate through the verbal fluency tasks according to the elderly group.

scholarly journals Fully Automatic Speech-Based Analysis of the Semantic Verbal Fluency Task

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 198-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra König ◽  
Nicklas Linz ◽  
Johannes Tröger ◽  
Maria Wolters ◽  
Jan Alexandersson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Verbal Fluency ◽  
Area Under Curve ◽  
Semantic Category ◽  
Verbal Fluency Task ◽  
Semantic Verbal Fluency ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Fully Automatic ◽  
Highly Correlated ◽  
Fluency Task

Background: Semantic verbal fluency (SVF) tests are routinely used in screening for mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In this task, participants name as many items as possible of a semantic category under a time constraint. Clinicians measure task performance manually by summing the number of correct words and errors. More fine-grained variables add valuable information to clinical assessment, but are time-consuming. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate whether automatic analysis of the SVF could provide these as accurate as manual and thus, support qualitative screening of neurocognitive impairment. Methods: SVF data were collected from 95 older people with MCI (n = 47), Alzheimer’s or related dementias (ADRD; n = 24), and healthy controls (HC; n = 24). All data were annotated manually and automatically with clusters and switches. The obtained metrics were validated using a classifier to distinguish HC, MCI, and ADRD. Results: Automatically extracted clusters and switches were highly correlated (r = 0.9) with manually established values, and performed as well on the classification task separating HC from persons with ADRD (area under curve [AUC] = 0.939) and MCI (AUC = 0.758). Conclusion: The results show that it is possible to automate fine-grained analyses of SVF data for the assessment of cognitive decline.

Introducing the Tactual Span: A New Task for Assessing Working Memory in the Teactile Modality

Assessment ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 107319112094992
Author(s):  
Eyal Heled ◽  
Shulamit Rotberg ◽  
Roman Yavich ◽  
A. Dan Hoofien
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
Verbal Fluency ◽  
Semantic Fluency ◽  
Attention Task ◽  
Verbal Fluency Task ◽  
Span Tasks ◽  
Tactile Modality ◽  
Fluency Task ◽  
Skewness And Kurtosis

The span paradigm is commonly used to assess working memory (WM), predominantly through the visual and auditory routes and less often through the tactile modality. The current study aimed to validate the “Tactual Span”, a new task developed to evaluate WM in the tactile modality. Participants were 140 healthy young adults, who performed the Tactual Span alongside span tasks in three additional modalities (auditory, visual, and visuospatial), as well as a selective attention task and a semantic verbal fluency task. The Tactual Span and other span tasks were found to correlate, while correlations with the selective attention and semantic fluency tasks were largely nonsignificant, indicating good construct validity. Cronbach’s alpha for both stages as well as skewness and kurtosis were also adequate. An exploratory factor analysis for the forward stage showed that the Tactual Span and Visuospatial Span were loaded on one factor, whereas the Auditory and Visual Spans were loaded on another factor. In the backward stage, all span tasks were loaded on a single factor. The findings provide an initial indication that the Tactual Span task is a feasible and valid tool for assessing WM in the tactile modality.

scholarly journals Non-Verbal and Verbal Fluency in Prodromal Huntington's Disease

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tarja-Brita Robins Wahlin ◽  
Mary A. Luszcz ◽  
Åke Wahlin ◽  
Gerard J. Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Huntington's Disease ◽  
Cognitive Functioning ◽  
Huntington’S Disease ◽  
Cognitive Deficits ◽  
Verbal Fluency ◽  
Regression Equation ◽  
Verbal Task ◽  
Semantic Fluency ◽  
Normal Range ◽  
Mutation Carriers

Background: This study examines non-verbal (design) and verbal (phonemic and semantic) fluency in prodromal Huntington's disease (HD). An accumulating body of research indicates subtle deficits in cognitive functioning among prodromal mutation carriers for HD. Methods: Performance was compared between 32 mutation carriers and 38 non-carriers in order to examine the magnitude of impairment across fluency tasks. The predicted years to onset (PYTO) in mutation carriers was calculated by a regression equation and used to divide the group according to whether onset was predicted as less than 12.75 years (HD+CLOSE; n = 16) or greater than 12.75 years (HD+DISTANT; n = 16). Results: The results indicate that both non-verbal and verbal fluency is sensitive to subtle impairment in prodromal HD. HD+CLOSE group produced fewer items in all assessed fluency tasks compared to non-carriers. HD+DISTANT produced fewer drawings than non-carriers in the non-verbal task. PYTO correlated significantly with all measures of non-verbal and verbal fluency. Conclusion: The pattern of results indicates that subtle cognitive deficits exist in prodromal HD, and that less structured tasks with high executive demands are the most sensitive in detecting divergence from the normal range of functioning. These selective impairments can be attributed to the early involvement of frontostriatal circuitry and frontal lobes.

scholarly journals Activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal axis in response to a verbal fluency task and associations with task performance

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Becker ◽  
Ursula Schade ◽  
Nicolas Rohleder
Keyword(s):  
Blood Pressure ◽  
Heart Rate ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Hpa Axis ◽  
Verbal Fluency ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal ◽  
Verbal Fluency Task ◽  
Acute Stressor ◽  
Fluency Task

AbstractSpeech fluency can be impaired in stressful situations. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether a verbal fluency task without any further stress induction by itself induces responses of the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis and of the sympathetic nervous system (SNS).The sample consisted of n = 85 participants (68.2% female; 33.3 ± 15.2 years, BMI = 23.7 ± 4.3 kg/m2) who performed two consecutive verbal fluency tasks for two minutes each. The categories were either ‘stress’ or ‘disease’ and ‘animals’ or ‘foods’ which were presented in a randomized order. Three saliva samples were collected, prior to the task (t0), immediately after (t1), and ten minutes after (t2). Salivary α-amylase and cortisol were assessed. Furthermore, blood pressure, heart rate, and subjective ratings of actual stress perception, level of effort, and tiredness were measured.The verbal fluency task induced an HPA axis response with a maximum cortisol level at t2 (p < .001, ηp2 = .19) which was independent of task performance. Furthermore, subjective stress and effort as well of tiredness increased immediately after the task (all p < .001; all d ≥ 1.0). Tiredness immediately after the task was negatively correlated with task performance (p = .002). No α-amylase, blood pressure or heart rate responses were found.We conclude that a verbal fluency task acts like an acute stressor that induces a cortisol response without the need of further (e.g., social-evaluative) stress components. Therefore, it is a little time-consuming alternative to other stress tasks that can be used in field studies with little effort.

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