Verbal fluency in children with ADHD: Strategy using and temporal properties

Abstract

Verbal fluency tasks are commonly used in cognitive and developmental neuropsychology in assessing executive functions, language skills as well as divergent thinking. Twenty-two typically developing children and 22 children with ADHD between the ages of 8 and12 years were examined using verbal fluency tasks, prepotent response inhibition, and working memory tests. The clinical group showed impaired inhibitory and spatial working memory processes. We used different qualitative analyses of verbal fluency tasks to explore the lexical and executive strategies (word clustering and switching), and the temporal properties of the responses. Children with ADHD had a leeway in applying relevant lexical or executive strategies related to difficulties in strategy using. The reduced efficiency of children with ADHD in semantic fluency task is based on suboptimal shifting between word clusters and is related to the lack of ability of producing new clusters of items. The group difference appeared at the level of accessing and/or activating common words; however, the executive process of searching the lexicon extensively is intact.

Keywords:

• ADHD
• Executive functions
• Verbal fluency

Notes

1. ¹However, this protocol is extensively used in Hungary; as a research information, we should note that all of our participants met the criteria of ADHD-C in regard to their symptoms.

2. ²Checking the measurement level of the dependent variables and testing if they are normally distributed within groups; testing the homogeneity of variances in the two groups (and the sphericity of dependent variables with more than two levels); testing if the observed covariance matrices of the dependent variables are equal across groups, etc.