Abstract

RUBIALES, Josefina; BAKKER, Liliana  and  RUSSO, Daiana. Phonological and semantic verbal fluency in children with attention and hyperactivity deficit disorder. Neuropsicologia Latinoamericana [online]. 2013, vol.5, n.3, pp. 7-15. ISSN 2075-9479.  http://dx.doi.org/10.5579/rnl.2013.0153.

Objective: To analyze the semantic and phonological verbal fluency in children diagnosed with attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity. Methods: We formed, intentionally, two groups, the clinical sample composed by 34 children with ADHD enrolled in the city of Mar del Plata, Argentina, aged between 8 and 14 years, 13 with ADHD inattentive subtype and 21 diagnosed with ADHD combined subtype, and the control sample composed by 70 children without ADHD diagnosis matched for sex, age and level of education. To assess verbal fluency the semantic verbal fluency test was used, words belonging to the animal category, and phonological verbal fluency test, words beginning with the letter M, from the Child Neuropsychological Battery. Results: Children with ADHD get lower performance on semantic verbal fluency in total word production and the number of clusters and discrete switches, and phonological fluency in total number of words, intrusions and number of clusters and discontinuous switches observing major differences in total amount of words in phonological fluency. Conclusions: The results obtained in the evaluation of cluster and switches highlight the importance of considering these processes in verbal fluency tasks, both phonological and semantic, since they appear as a possible measure of executive control in children with ADHD allowing to increase descriptive on power of these tests.

Keywords : ADHD; Phonological and semantic verbal fluency; Executive functions.

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