Qualitative and Quantitative Verbal Fluency Performance Analysis: Overall Word Production, Clusters, and Switching as They Relate to Demographic Variables Among a Sample of Spanish-Speaking Latino Adults in Ventura County, Californi

Verbal fluency tasks have been found to be especially utile and are among the most widely used measures to assess cognitive functioning; however, utilization of these tasks with ethnic minorities is under-researched. Attainment of normative data has slowly been increasing through research focusing on Spanish-speaking populations, though consideration for possible interfering cultural factors such as education, bilingualism, gender, age, etc. still need to further be explored among minorities. Prior research has also determined particular utility in qualitative analysis of verbal fluency performance as opposed to the more traditional overall word productivity; however, this type of qualitative analysis of verbal fluency performance is still lacking among minority populations.;This study explored traditional quantitative (word productivity) and more novel qualitative (switches, clusters) aspects of verbal fluency performance as they relate to demographic variables among a sample of lower-education, Spanish-speaking adults. Comparison of strategy utilization (clusters, switching) with overall word productivity was conducted, with age controls, to determine whether utilized strategy relates to improved performance. No significant differences between genders' performances were identified among this sample. Higher education and literacy levels were related to greater semantic and phonemic verbal fluency performance, as well as higher rates of switching on phonemic fluency tasks. Switching, in general was found to be particularly relevant to overall word productivity on both types of verbal fluency tasks.