Need for achievement and performance on measures of behavioral fluency.

This investigation was designed to assess the relationship between a validated personality characteristic, need for achievement (nAch), and performance on measures of behavioral fluency. To infer this relationship, 50 neurologically intact college undergraduates were administered a questionnaire assessing nAch and a battery of tests including a short form of the WAIS and measures of behavioral fluency (i.e., verbal fluency). Statistical analysis indicated that subjects high on nAch obtained higher scores than subjects low on nAch on the measures of figural fluency and the WAIS Verbal Scale. No significant difference on verbal fluency was seen between the two groups. Secondly, the group high on nAch also had a higher mean Verbal IQ but not a higher mean Performance IQ as measured by a short form of the WAIS than did subjects scoring low on nAch.     

Exploring ease in thinking aloud

Thinking aloud seems unnatural and difficult to most subjects. The present study explored the relation between Ease in Thinking Aloud, verbal fluency, Self-talk, and Big Five personality traits for a heterogeneous sample of 101 German-speaking adults (50 women and 51 men). Ease in Thinking Aloud positively correlated with scores on verbal fluency (r =.31) and Conscientiousness (r =.38). The discussion considers implications for further research on ease in thinking aloud.     

Sex Differences in Relationships between Verbal Fluency and Personality

The Thurstone Verbal Fluency Test, Vandenberg Mental Rotation Test, and NEO-FFI personality test were administered to 182 university participants (126 female, 56 male). The men scored higher than the women on the spatial test, and the women scored higher than the men for the verbal fluency test, as reported by others. Women reported more extraversion and agreeableness than men. Extraversion was correlated with verbal fluency for both sexes. For the men, verbal fluency was also positively associated with agreeableness, and for the women, verbal fluency was associated with openness and conscientiousness. No relationships between personality and spatial ability were found. Thus, the relationships between cognitive variables and personality factors differed between the sexes. These findings are discussed in terms of the common frontal neural substrate of verbal fluency and these aspects of personality, as well as the inherently social nature of language as a communication tool.     

Agreeableness,conscientiousness, and effortful control processes

Effortful control (EC) is believed to be a superordinate, temperament system that is associated with early-appearing individual differences in self-regulation. It has been suggested that EC indexes the common developmental process underlying Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. Theory suggests this association, but little empirical evidence has linked personality to actual self-regulatory behaviors. This study examined personality and cognitive assessments associated with impairments in self-regulation. College students (N=113) gave self-reports on the five dimensions of personality. They also completed the Stroop test, Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST), and a verbal fluency test. Agreeableness predicted Stroop reaction times. Both Agreeableness and Conscientiousness predicted WCST measures. Conscientiousness predicted verbal fluency for men. Results were discussed in terms of EC being a common developmental substrate of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness.     

Gender differences in orthographic, verbal, and compositional fluency: Implications for assessing writing disabilities in primary grade children

Measures of oral verbal fluency (word finding), written orthographic fluency (alphabet task), and written composition (narrative and oral expository) were administered to 300 children (50 girls and 50 boys each in the first, second, and third grades). Both oral verbal fluency and written orthographic fluency correlated significantly with the number of words (fluency) and the number of clauses (microorganization) in the compositions, but boys performed significantly better than girls on oral verbal fluency and girls performed significantly better than boys on written orthographic fluency. Girls consistently outperformed boys on the number of words and the number of clauses produced in narrative and expository composition. Thus, in beginning writing, orthographic fluency may be relatively more important than verbal fluency and boys may be at greater risk for writing disabilities. However, more boys were identified as having a disability in composition when absolute criteria (lowest 5% of normal distribution) were used, but about the same number of boys and girls were identified as having a disability in composition when relative criteria (significant discrepancy between Verbal IQ and compositional skill, based on the Mahalanobis statistic) were used. School psychologists are encouraged to use standardized measures of othographic, verbal, and compositional fluency to identify primary grade children needing early intervention to prevent more severe writing disabilities.     

Working memory as a predictor of verbal fluency

This study investigated whether working memory capacity could account for individual differences in verbal fluency. Working memory was assessed by the speaking span test (Daneman & Green, 1986) that taxes the processing and storage functions of working memory during sentence production. Verbal fluency was assessed by (1) a speech generation task in which subjects made a speech about a picture; (2) an oral reading task in which subjects read aloud a prose passage; and (3) a Baars, Motley, and MacKay (1975) task for eliciting oral slips of the tongue (e.g.,wet gun forget one). Speking span was significantly correlated with performance on all three tasks; individuals with small speaking spans were less fluent and more prone to making speech errors. Whereas speaking span was related to individual differences in verbal fluency on the speech and reading tasks, reading span, a measure included to assess working memory capacity during sentence comprehension, was only significantly related to individual differences in verbal fluency on the reading task. The methodology proved useful for revealing whether a particular kind of oral reading error reflected a reading failure or an articulatory failure.This research was supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.     

Divergent thinking: Strategies and executive involvement in generating novel uses for familiar objects

Although the Alternative Uses divergent thinking task has been widely used in psychometric and experimental studies of creativity, the cognitive processes underlying this task have not been examined in detail before the two studies are reported here. In Experiment 1, a verbal protocol analysis study of the Alternative Uses task was carried out with a Think aloud group (N = 40) and a Silent control group (N = 64). The groups did not differ in fluency or novelty of idea production indicating no verbal overshadowing. Analysis of protocols from the Think aloud group suggested that initial responses were based on a strategy of Retrieval from long‐term memory of pre‐known uses. Later responses tended to be based on a small number of other strategies: property‐use generation, imagined Disassembly of the target object into components and scanning of Broad Use categories for possible uses of the target item. Novelty of uses was particularly associated with the Disassembly strategy. Experiment 2 (N = 103) addressed the role of executive processes in generating new and previously known uses by examining individual differences in category fluency, letter fluency and divergent task performance. After completing the task, participants were asked to indicate which of their responses were new for them. It was predicted and found in regression analyses that letter fluency (an executively loading task) was related to production of ‘new’ uses and category fluency was related to production of ‘old’ uses but not vice versa.     

Semantic and Phonemic Verbal Fluency in Blinds

A person who has suffered the total loss of a sensory system has, indirectly, suffered a brain lesion. Semantic and phonologic verbal fluency are used for evaluation of executive function and language. The aim of this study is evaluation and comparison of phonemic and semantic verbal fluency in acquired blinds. We compare 137 blinds and 124 sighted people in verbal fluency task. The tasks were phonemic and semantic verbal fluency test that subjects should be generate as many word as possible in a limited amount of time for a given letter (Phonemic fluency) or a given category (Semantic fluency). Independent T Test was used to comparing blind with sighted. Findings show significant difference between two groups so that that sighted subjects have higher performance in semantic verbal fluency task (p = 0.000). Comparing sighted and blind subjects in phonemic verbal fluency task shows performance in sighted subjects (p = 0.000). Based on this study blinds have lower performance in semantic and phonemic verbal fluency task as a executive function of frontal lobe.     

A factor analysis of mental abilities and personality traits

The relationship between measures of verbal fluency and certain personality traits is examined by factor techniques. From a matrix of eight factor scores derived from mental tests plus five personality scores, six factors were obtained. An oblique solution lends limited support to the hypothesized relationship between the two domains.This study was supported by a grant from the Research Foundation of the University of Utah.Currently on leave of absence with the National Research Council.     

The Psychological Construct of Word Fluency

Measures of word fluency have been convincingly linked in the literature to damage in the left prefrontal lobe region. Yet, a reduction in word fluency has also been reported with diffuse, multifocal and nonfrontal lobe damage. Despite the undisputed neuropsychological application of multiple word fluency measures, the psychological construct underlying this measure is not well understood. In a sample of 360 normal adults stratified by age, gender, and level of education, we found that auditory attention and word knowledge were among the most important determinants. With respect to memory, short-term memory was not significantly correlated, but long-term memory was. Despite these three determinants, a large share of the variance of the multiple regression was still not accounted for, which underscores the partial independence of word fluency per se. Thus, we propose a distinction between (1) poor word fluency secondary to deficient verbal attention, word knowledge, and/or verbal long-term memory and (2) impaired word fluency without these three areas concurrently affected. Based on a review of the literature, it seems likely that in the latter condition, the profile is more associated with prefrontal lobe impairment, versus in the former condition, diffuse multifocal or nonfrontal lobe factors can play a role.     

Semantic and phonemic verbal fluency in Parkinson's disease: Influence of clinical and demographic variables

Changes of cognitive function in PD have been extensively documented and defined as a 'frontal' type executive dysfunction. One of the main components of this executive dysfunction is the impairment of verbal fluency. The aim of the present study was to assess semantic and phonemic fluency in a large sample of PD patients and to investigate the effect of clinical and sociodemographic variables on verbal fluency in this patient group. Three hundred patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease who were consecutive referrals to our clinic and 50 age and education matched healthy controls completed the phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks. Both phonemic and semantic verbal fluency were significantly impaired in PD patients relative to matched controls. Stage of illness, presence of depression, education and age influenced verbal fluency measures. Regression analyses established that global measures of cognitive ability (MMSE) and executive function (FAB) and side of onset of motor symptoms predicted 36-37% of variance of phonemic or semantic verbal fluency measures. Thus, future studies aimed at assessing cognitive functioning in PD patients treated by deep brain stimulation (DBS) should adequately take into account several factors (stage of illness, depression, executive functioning) which may potentially influence performance on verbal fluency tasks.     

Monitoring the Changing Status of Semantic Memory in Alzheimer's Disease: An Evaluation of Several Process Measures

The deficits in generating correct words on verbal fluency tasks exhibited by patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are accompanied by fewer switching responses, smaller phonemic and semantic cluster sizes, and greater than normal percentages of errors and category labels. On category fluency tasks, patients generate a greater proportion of words that are prototypical of their semantic class. To determine whether any of these supplementary measures of verbal fluency performance might be useful in revealing processes involved in the decline of semantic memory in AD, we studied 219 patients with AD and 115 elderly control participants longitudinally. Previously reported group differences between patients and controls were replicated, but changes in average cluster size, error rates, and prototypicality were not related to changes in overall severity of dementia and test-retest stability was only modest. The change in the percentage of labels generated on the Supermarket task was related to changes in dementia severity, but test-retest stability on this measure was quite low. All of these process measures appear to reflect only the current status of the patient's attention to the task and access to semantic knowledge, but they do not forecast future performance. The numbers of switching responses on the fluency tasks were sensitive to differences between clinically deteriorated and clinically stable patients and showed fairly high test-retest stability. However, the number of switching responses is so highly correlated with the number of correct words that it contributes little to the understanding of the processes involved in the progressive decline in performance on fluency tasks by patients with AD.     

Intelligence,divergent thinking,and creativity

Guilford's Alternate Uses, Plot Titles, and Consequences tests were given to 94 university students along with the Concept Mastery Test, a traditional measure of verbal intelligence. These measures were correlated with an inventory of creative activities and accomplishments. A composite index of ideational fluency correlated with four creativity indices: Crafts, Performing Arts, Math-Science, and Total Creativity, while the Concept Mastery Test correlated with three indices: Art, Literature, and Total Creativity. With the exception that verbal intelligence was a better predictor of creativity in literature, no statistical difference between the predictive accuracies of ideational fluency and verbal intelligence were found. The need to re-examine the widely accepted association of divergent thinking with creativity was discussed.     

Emotional Intelligence and cognitive abilities – associations and sex differences

In order to expand on previous research, this cross-sectional study investigated the relationship between Emotional Intelligence (EI) and cognitive abilities in healthy adults with a special focus on potential sex differences. EI was assessed by means of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso-Emotional-Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), whereas cognitive abilities were investigated using the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia (BACS), which measures key aspects of cognitive functioning, i.e. verbal memory, working memory, motor speed, verbal fluency, attention and processing speed, and reasoning and problem solving. 137 subjects (65% female) with a mean age of 38.7 ± 11.8 years were included into the study. While males and females were comparable with regard to EI, men achieved significantly higher BACS composite scores and outperformed women in the BACS subscales motor speed, attention and processing speed, and reasoning and problem solving. Verbal fluency significantly predicted EI, whereas the MSCEIT subscale understanding emotions significantly predicted the BACS composite score. Our findings support previous research and emphasize the relevance of considering cognitive abilities when assessing ability EI in healthy individuals.     

Subjective time and perceptual skill

Subjective time estimation was hypothesized as correlated with the number of discrete events one discerns per interval and one's attentiveness, interest in the experience, and efficiency. It was predicted that one who recognizes many discrete events per interval and rates high on these personality traits tends to underestimate time. For personality attributes, tapped by questionnaire, high scores denote an individual who shows the predicted characteristics of underestimaters. Estimations were made of a 3-min. tone of 191 Hz by 40 college men. Pearson correlation between questionnaire scores and time estimates was -.30. All 8 subjects with scores below 100 overestimated.     

中文音素言语流畅性任务的近红外脑功能成像研究

本文使用近红外脑功能成像技术探测正常被试在中文音素言语流畅性任务时的脑激活模式,34名右利手大学生被试参加了实验,实验任务为音素言语流畅性任务,采用近红外脑功能成像仪检测被试额颞区在任务时的激活情况,结果发现该任务激活了大脑双侧的额颞区,双侧缘上回的激活可能为中文音素言语流畅性任务的语言特异性激活脑区,该研究为临床诊断提供了参考价值,并说明了近红外脑功能成像仪可用于中文言语流畅性任务的研究     

The creativity quotient: An objective scoring of ideational fluency

A classical test for accessing the potential creativity of an individual is based on ideational fluency, where a person is asked to generate all possible uses for a familiar item like a piece of paper. In scoring the results, it is intuitive that the suggested uses should not be weighted equally. Those suggested in radically different categories are “worth more”; than those suggested within the same category only. We used information theory to derive a simple mathematical expression for a more objective measure of ideational fluency. We call this the creativity quotient (CQ). This innovative measure was examined using a small sample of participants, and is illustrated by the responses of two typical individuals from an ideational fluency task. The CQ accounts for the number of ideas (fluency), plus the number of categories (flexibility). Ongoing research will examine the independence of CQ from established measures of intelligence and personality.     

Relationship Between Posturography,Clinical Balance and Executive Function in Parkinson´s Disease

This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between posturography, clinical balance, and executive function tests in Parkinson´s disease (PD). Seventy-one people participated in the study. Static posturography evaluated the center of pressure fluctuations in quiet standing and dynamic posturography assessed sit-to-stand, tandem walk, and step over an obstacle. Functional balance was evaluated by Berg Balance Scale, MiniBESTest, and Timed Up and Go test. Executive function was assessed by Trail Making Test (TMT) and semantic verbal fluency test. Step over obstacle measures (percentage of body weight transfer and movement time) were moderately correlated to Timed Up and Go, part B of TMT and semantic verbal fluency (r > 0.40; p < 0.05 in all relationships). Stepping over an obstacle assesses the responses to internal perturbations. Participants with shorter movement times and higher percentage of body weight transfer (higher lift up index) on this task were also faster in Timed Up and Go, part B of TMT, and semantic verbal fluency. All these tasks require executive function (problem solving, sequencing, shifting attention), which is affected by PD and contribute to postural assessment.     

Individual differences in cognition: Some relationships between personality and memory

Individual differences in cognition were studied in the form of the hypothesis that arousal, as indexed by personality measures of extraversion and neuroticism, affects the way in which verbal material is organized in memory. Subjects pretested on measures of these personality variables participated in either a paired-associates learning or a free-recall experiment. On the paired-associates task, subjects who were thought to be high on arousal made fewer errors when response terms were semantically similar than low arousal subjects. On the other hand, subjects thought low on arousal made fewer errors when response words were phonetically similar than high arousal subjects. On the free-recall task, low arousal subjects were found to cluster words together on the basis of semantic category at a higher rate than high arousal subjects. These results were taken to support the view that high arousal (as indexed by personality measures) leads to a focus on the physical aspects of verbal material, whereas low arousal leads to a memory organized around semantic aspects. The implications of these findings for other views of memory are discussed.     

Individual response profiles in the behavioral assessment of personality

A long-standing problem in the behavioural assessment of personality is the individual specificity of responses. Often, different persons externalize the same trait in different responses. One solution to this problem is to aggregate many different responses. The paper compares the power of response aggregation for predicting self-and other-ratings of personality with two alternative strategies of response selection: the nomothetic strategy of selecting the response with the highest overall predictive power, and the more idiographic strategy of selecting, for each individual, the most extreme response. Seventy subjects were videotaped in a sequence of social situations inducing shyness to various degrees. Five different nonverbal measures of shyness all correlated significantly with the subjects' self- or other-rated shyness, and showed low correlations across subjects and a substantial cross-situational consistency of response profiles. Response aggregation and both strategies of response selection were found to be equally powerful in predicting the subjects' self- and other-ratings of shyness from the five behavioural responses. Therefore, these findings somewhat dampen the hope often expressed in recent theoretical discussions of personality assessment that more respect for the individual case may improve nomothetic assessment procedures.