Performance of northeastern children from public schools on phonological and semantic verbal fluency tasks

Abstract

Introduction: Verbal Fluency is a basic language function that designates the ability to produce fluent speech.Despite consisting of an essentially linguistic function, its measures have been widely developed and also used to evaluate executive aspects of verbal behavior.Performance on Verbal Fluency Tasks varies according to age, education and cognitive development.However, there are few studies in Brazil with sample data in this paradigm in public schools, which makes collecting data from different cultural contexts relevant.Objective: This study's main objective is to analyze the performance of public-school children in Phonological and Semantic Verbal Fluency tasks.Methodology: Three Phonological Verbal Fluency tasks and three Semantic Verbal Fluency tasks were carried out with 100 children aged seven to ten years old, duly enrolled in Elementary School I at public schools in the Municipal Education Network of Patos.The data found were analyzed using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test, Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA), followed by Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Post-Hoc tests.The t test, Pearson Correlation Coefficient and partial Eta squared (ηp²) were also used.Results: There was no evidence of interaction effect between the variables gender and age; as well as the gender variable on the general performance of the participants, however, a general effect of age was found on this.The three Phonological Verbal Fluency (FVF) tasks, both individually and in combination, were influenced by age.In the Semantic Verbal Fluency (FVS) test, a significant agerelated effect was found in the "animals" and "fruits" category and for the total number of correct answers in the FVS.Conclusion: The results found seem to be supported by neurodevelopmental aspects, since explicit memory systems have an earlier maturational course and earlier consolidation in relation to executive functions and the frontal lobes, whose development extends into adulthood.The data were compatible with the existing literature, however, compared to a study with the same methodological design with children from private neighborhood schools, children from public schools had greater difficulties when compared to those children.The possibility is raised that the socioeconomic variable may be influencing the performance of verbal fluency tasks.

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