Animal Verbal Fluency and Design Fluency in school-aged children: Effects of age, sex, and mean level of parental education, and regression-based normative data

Abstract

The Animal Verbal Fluency (AVF) and Design Fluency (DF) structured and unstructured test versions were administered to N = 294 healthy native Dutch-speaking children who were aged between 6.56 and 15.85 years. The AVF and DF structured test scores increased linearly as a function of age, whilst the relation between age and the DF unstructured test score was curvilinear (i.e., the improvement in test scores was much more pronounced for younger children than for older children). A higher mean level of parental education was associated with significantly higher AVF and DF structured test scores. Sex was not associated with any of the outcomes. Demographically corrected norms for the AVF and DF tests were established, and an automatic scoring program was provided.

Keywords:

• Fluency development
• Executive functions
• Demographic influences
• Continuous norms

Notes

¹ Figure 1 presents the expected fluency test scores at a given age relative to the expected test scores at 6.5 years. Relative rather than raw expected test scores were presented for reasons of clarity and comparability (i.e., the different outcome measures were expressed in different units—raw values versus square root transformed values—which makes it difficult to directly compare raw expected test scores). Note also that Figure 1 presents relative values for children who have parents with a low MLPE, but the shape of these curves is very similar for children who have parents with a high MLPE.

Figure 1. Relative expected Verbal Fluency, √Design Fluency structured, and Design Fluency unstructured test scores as a function of age. Relative expected test scores were presented rather than raw expected test scores for reasons of clarity and comparability (i.e., the different raw test scores were expressed in different units).