Methodological Criteria for Scoring Clustering and Switching in Verbal Fluency Tasks

Abstract

Abstract The objective of this study was to describe an adaptation to Brazilian Portuguese of the methodological criteria for analysis of clustering and switching in semantic verbal fluency (SVF) and phonemic verbal fluency (PVF) tasks. The adaptation process consisted of six steps, including the selection of the clustering and switching variables based on data from a sample of 419 children and the analysis of inter-rater reliability (six raters). The following variables were scored: the total number of words generated the raw number of clusters, the mean cluster size, and the raw number of switches. There was a significant association between raters (intra-class correlation coefficients between 0.95 and 0.99), showing that the analytical method was reliable. Our study provides an evaluation of SVF and PVF tasks that goes beyond the overall score, making it possible to investigate the cognitive processes underlying this neuropsychological function.

Keywords

• semantic verbal fluency
• phonemic verbal fluency
• clustering
• switching