A cross-linguistic comparison of verbal fluency tests.

The aim of this study was to compare oral fluency strategies of Spanish-English bilinguals in Spanish and English with Spanish and English monolinguals when given either phonemic (alphabetical) or semantic categorical cues. The use of grammatical words (words that play a grammatical function relating words within a sentence) or content words (words that have a meaning such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives) in the alphabetical categories is analyzed. This study also addresses the relation between productivity and the use of a semantic strategy to organize responses. Eighty-two right-handed participants (28 males and 54 females) with a mean age of 61.76 (SD = 9.30; range 50-84) and a mean educational level of 14.8 years (SD = 3.6; range 2-23) were selected. Forty-five of the subjects were English monolinguals, 18 were Spanish monolinguals, and 19 were Spanish-English bilinguals. Oral verbal fluency was tested asking subjects to generate words within phonemic (F, A, and S) and semantic (animals) categories. In the phonemic condition, performance of English and Spanish monolinguals was similar. Bilinguals produced significantly fewer words than English monolinguals in the categorical semantic condition but not in the phonological condition. In the phonological condition, English monolinguals generated significantly more grammatical words than Spanish monolinguals, and bilinguals produced a significantly higher number of grammatical words in English than in Spanish. Animal subcategories and semantic associations were similar in both languages for all groups. Results were discussed in terms of crosslinguistic differences in the recall of alphabetical words.