Letter and category Fluency Test in Spanish-Speaking Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders.

INTRODUCTION: Verbal fluency test is a short psychometric test, which is sensitive to verbal ability and executive control impairment. We did not find studies that analyze verbal fluency in relation to the neurodevelopmental disorders in Spanish-speaking children with letters P-M. Our objective was to analyze the verbal fluency of Spanish-speaking children with neurodevelopmental disorders. METHOD: We carried out a retrospective cross-sectional study to analyze the performance of children who had undergone a neuropsychological assessment. RESULTS: We included 164 patients. There were 55 (33.54%) patients with low intellectual performance (LIP), 19 (11.59%) patients with dyslexia , and 90 (54.88%) patients had an ADHD. Patients with LIP showed lower phonological fluency than patients with ADHD. As for semantic fluidity, differences were observed between patients with LIP and ADHD and also between LIP and dyslexia. The probability of having LIP was 9.6 times greater when somebody had a scale score lower than 7 in the PF task and it was 16.7 times greater when the scale score was lower than 7 in the SF task. CONCLUSIONS: There was a direct relationship between FSIQ and the performance in verbal fluency test, which is a brief and effective neuropsychological test in revealing deficits in executive functions, verbal abilities, and LIP.

Verbal Fluency Test in Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders.

Background The verbal fluency task is a widely used psychometric test to account for cognitive functions, particularly, verbal and executive functions. Being an easy and fast test to administer, it is a good neuropsychological tool in low technology environments. Our objective was to analyze the performance in verbal fluency of Spanish-speaking children with neurodevelopmental disorders. Methods We performed a retrospective cross-sectional study to analyze the performance of children who had undergone a verbal fluency test in a neuropsychological assessment. Results We included 115 participants. There were 41 (35.65%) participants with low intellectual performance (LIP), 63 (54.78%) with attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), and 11(9.57%) participants with dyslexia. Participants with LIP showed lower phonological and semantic fluency scores than participants with ADHD, and a lower performance in semantic fluency than the dyslexia group. The probability of having LIP was 6.12 times greater when somebody had a scale score lower than 7 in the phonological task and it was 7.9 times greater when the scale score was lower than 7 in the semantic task. Conclusion There was a direct relationship between Full Scale Intelligence Quotient and verbal fluency test performance, the latter being a brief and effective neuropsychological test that can reveal deficit not only in executive functions and verbal abilities but also detect LIP.