Abstract
Background The verbal fluency task is a widely used psychometric test to account for cognitive functions, particularly, verbal and executive functions. Being an easy and fast test to administer, it is a good neuropsychological tool in low technology environments. Our objective was to analyze the performance in verbal fluency of Spanish-speaking children with neurodevelopmental disorders. Methods We performed a retrospective cross-sectional study to analyze the performance of children who had undergone a verbal fluency test in a neuropsychological assessment. Results We included 115 participants. There were 41 (35.65%) participants with low intellectual performance (LIP), 63 (54.78%) with attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), and 11(9.57%) participants with dyslexia. Participants with LIP showed lower phonological and semantic fluency scores than participants with ADHD, and a lower performance in semantic fluency than the dyslexia group. The probability of having LIP was 6.12 times greater when somebody had a scale score lower than 7 in the phonological task and it was 7.9 times greater when the scale score was lower than 7 in the semantic task. Conclusion There was a direct relationship between Full Scale Intelligence Quotient and verbal fluency test performance, the latter being a brief and effective neuropsychological test that can reveal deficit not only in executive functions and verbal abilities but also detect LIP.
Copyright
Association for Helping Neurosurgical Sick People. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Derivative-Non Commercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit.
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This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License, which permits unrestricted reproduction and distribution, for non-commercial purposes only; and use and reproduction, but not distribution, of adapted material for non-commercial purposes only, provided the original work is properly cited.
