Verbal fluency and verbal comprehension abilities in synonym tasks

Generating different synonym candidates and evaluating these candidates with respect to their synonymy with the stimulus word are two components of solving an open synonym task, which requires giving synonyms for a given word (cf. Janssen, Hoskens, & De Boeck, 1993). Separate subtasks were designed to identify these components. It is shown in this study that the generation component ability is primarily related to verbal fluency abilities, whereas the evaluation component ability is primarily related to verbal comprehension abilities. Moreover, evidence is given that these two component abilities can account for the correlations of the open synonym task with other ability measures.