[Verbal fluency tasks I. Investigation of the Hungarian version of the letter fluency task between 5 and 89 years of age].

The letter fluency task is a widely used neuropsychological instrument to assess language and executive functions. We investigated the Hungarian version of the letter fluency task across lifespan, between 5 and 89 years of age (N=562). In the letter fluency task the participants are asked to generate as many words as possible in 1 minute that began with letter K, T or A. We obtained the next classical scores from the fluency task: number of words, number of perseverations, errors and more complex scores like number of clusters, cluster size, total switches and cluster switches. We found partly different developmental trajectories for these indices. Sex differences in performance were more prominent in younger ages. The analysis of the classical and complex indices of the Hungarian letter fluency task presented in our study can help in the investigation of normal and disrupted executive functions in the case of psychiatric and neurological disorders.