44, 3544 (2017). The relationship of verbal fluency to executive functions (EFs) remains somewhat unclear. 1. Disord. hb```~V?Ad`0p``l69"R|r%A;:,::X@$3E!=W\s>`^df P#43OiF 20 '| Studies that have examined many of the most commonly used tests of executive functions find only modest correlations among the tests suggesting that these functions are difficult . Thus, it was not possible to validate our results in a totally independent dataset. Abwender, D. A., Swan, J., Bowerman, J. Front. Rich, J. Cogn. The current results do not exclude EF as a determinant of verbal fluency, but they do suggest that language processing is the critical component for this task, even without significant aphasic symptoms. error types38, latencies39 and semantic distances18 to complement the common analysis of the total sum of words. Rev. In general, previous studies support the positive relationship between the duration of speech breaks and higher cognitive demands56. With regards to cognitive flexibility (Table 2) 7/15 sVF features were related to errors participants produced within the sVF task. These findings partially contradict previous findings investigating the linear relationship between errors in the VF task and EF performance. The relationship between VF and the various subdomains of EFs has frequently been investigated in both healthy controls19,22,23,24 and patients17,25. In particular, it has been found to be affected by multiple factors such as the underlying language component in the VF task, underlying cognitive processes such as intelligence, and fluctuating hormonal levels25,26. C, F); and semantic VF, in which the examinee is asked to produce words that belong to a specific semantic category (e.g. The German standardized neuropsychological version of the VF task was used due to language-specific differences in the frequency and usage of letters and categories36. Pay as you go: $1.75 per subtest; Prepay: 1 usage* per subtest . Interestingly, our results indicate an ambiguous relationship between latency patterns and EF test results. Verbal Fluency: Language or Executive Function Measure? Amunts, J., Camilleri, J.A., Eickhoff, S.B. For example, animals were clustered based on their living environment, human use and zoological categories. Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Thus, producing closely related words and building high cluster sizes might represent the most efficient strategy of successful EF performers. Results given in the main manuscript focus on the RVM approach, while results for the PLS analysis are given in the supplement. The total Letter Fluency vs Category fluency Contrast scaled score as part of the, Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS) Verbal Fluency Test. Neuropsychology 11, 138146 (1997). Res. Altogether, the present study demonstrated the predictive superiority of an extended VF feature evaluation. However, previous findings support our results with respect to the importance of speech breaks within the first interval of the VF task in that previous studies found a relationship between longer latencies in the beginning of the VF task and cognitive flexibility performance39. J. Int. Similar findings have also been reported in patients with brain damages90 and schizophrenia38. Weiss, E. M. et al. Cytomegalovirus and Toxoplasma Gondii Serostatus Prospectively Correlated With Problems in Self-Regulation but not Executive Function Among Older Adults. Nikolai, T. et al. endstream endobj startxref Parkinsons disease or ADHD. In contrast, some studies did not find an increase in the number of perseveration errors in Parkinsons patients compared to healthy controls91. the sum of correctly produced words, an additional prediction analysis was computed using solely sum scores. Together they form a unique fingerprint. While participants are assumed to produce clusters with high-frequent words in the beginning of the task, less frequent words are produced during the progression of the task leading to more switches and increased searching times92. The reliability and internal validity of the wisconsin card sorting test. Google Scholar. HHS Vulnerability Disclosure, Help This study examined the relationship between verbal fluency and executive function in 324 individuals across the lifespan by assessing the developmental trajectories of English monolingual and multilingual children aged 7-15 years (N = 154) and adults from 18 to 80 years old (N = 170). Decreased memory performance in healthy humans induced by stress-level cortisol treatment. These are the aspects of daily tasks that look like "struggle". Similar to previously reported results in other EF subdomains, semantic relatedness features in simple sVF task (animals) were selected as meaningful variables for attention performance. Am. Neurosci. Individual differences in cortisol levels and performance on a test of executive function in men and women. Here, the sum of correctly produced words was selected as an important sVF feature less often than for cognitive flexibility tests and no significant correlation with EF target was found. CAS Cortex 86, 186204 (2017). Exp. Neuropsychol. Executive function variables were predicted based on the sum scores of all 3 semantic verbal fluency tests as well as the total sum score across these 3 tests, which led to a total number of four verbal fluency features. Latencies within the first quarter of the switching sVF task (t3) were selected as relevant for attention performance, indicating that a higher processing speed in the beginning of the sVF task resulted in faster reaction times in the divided attention test. Npj Schizophr. However, no significant (linear) correlation between errors and cognitive flexibility performance was found. Aging 15, 917 (2000). Sum scores of each sVF tasks separately, sum score of correct produced words across all sVF and errors (perseveration, category errors) were included in the prediction analysis. Thus, the results indicated that both letter (phonemic) and category (semantic) fluency are related to language, but the relationship to EF is not supported by the results.". Neuropsychol. Griksiene, R. & Ruksenas, O. This analysis revealed significant correlations between SPM, Stroop, TMT, WCST, WAF-G, WAF-R and the VF task performance. Gen. Psychiatry 56, 527533 (1999). Neuropsychol. However, it remains open whether comprehensive sVF features may be even more helpful in clinical practice than commonly used EF test batteries. Data analysis was mainly driven by S.W, K.R.P., J.A.C., J.A. Specifically, the prediction analyses reveal a number of additional variables that measure how fast participants completed the tests and how many errors they made. Thus, we suggest that processing speed and reaction times indicate that people acting fast in cognitive tasks also perform more successfully in VF tasks than participants thinking more in detail about their answer. Firstly, due to the fact that inter-individuality influences both EFs and VF performance, further studies would benefit from gathering additional inter-individual parameters. Ho, A. K. et al. Canning, S. J. D., Leach, L., Stuss, D., Ngo, L. & Black, S. E. Diagnostic utility of abbreviated fluency measures in Alzheimer disease and vascular dementia. In general, different conceptual structures are implemented in these models. due to different phases of the menstrual cycle38. With regards to tests assessing working memory capacity, two of three EF tests, namely NVLT (r=0.24; p=0.0002) and NBN (r=0.16; p=0.009) were predicted significantly. Here, words are represented as a point in a multi-dimensional space creating word embeddings53. Neuropsychol. However, traditional versions of the test depend on several cognitive factors beyond these components. Verbal fluency and oral diadochokinesia involve phonarticulatory coordination, response inhibition, and phonological processing and may also be affected in people with PD. Article Disord. Finally, regarding the relationship between VF and cognitive flexibility, studies report a positive correlation of switching between categories in VF tasks and cognitive flexibility performance21. Am. 2, 113122 (2016). Methods: Sixty adults were evaluated using . In contrast, a linear relationship of sVF information and EF performance was shown for the number of correctly produced words. Neuropsychol. Likewise, a higher level of education was associated with better performance in VF tasks82,85. The relation between these linguistic and non-linguistic domains, in turn, is mediated by individual linguistic proficiency and developmental changes that take place across the lifespan. In detail, these semantic measurements also quantify semantic distances of sequential and cumulative word pairs. Correlation coefficients of true and predicted executive function variables computed with full feature set. Specifically, these limitations are e.g. Epub 2022 Oct 6. Res. The results showed that the stress hormone cortisol and the sex hormone estradiol have a high impact on VF performance. Hayashi, M., Kato, M., Igarashi, K. & Kashima, H. Superior fluid intelligence in children with Aspergers disorder. Executive function deficits are observed in people with Parkinson's disease (PD) from early stages and have great impact on daily living activities. 66, 306310 (2008). Previous studies also described attention as a crucial cognitive function to perform VF54. 2021 Nov;57(11):1943-1957. doi: 10.1037/dev0001245. 22, 14231442 (1996). On the one hand, VF is assessed with a lexical task. Due to the fact that all requested words start with the same phoneme, the lexical VF task is also commonly referred to as phonological VF task. Weiss, E. M. et al. Whiteside, D. M. et al. Comparing correlation and prediction analyses, crucial differences in the results were observed. since efs are also involved in speech production, verbal fluency (vf) tests are integrated in several clinical diagnostic batteries to assess efs. fishes, birds, mammals)50. Sheline, Y. I. et al. Here, it would be highly interesting to also include features from the lexical VF task. %%EOF CAS Acad. Correlation of true and predicted verbal fluency sum scores applying Relevance Vector Machine algorithm. WordNet: An Electronic Lexical Database. Thus, the results indicated that both letter (phonemic) and category (semantic) fluency are related to language, but the relationship to EF is not supported by the results. and JavaScript. In contrast to the Vienna Testsystem, tests run within Psytoolkit are not standardized and thus do not come with associated test manuals. Paula, J. J., de Paiva, G. C. de C. & Costa, D. de S. Use of a modified version of the switching verbal fluency test for the assessment of cognitive flexibility. For example, a positive correlation between inhibition, assessed with a stop-signal task, and the reaction time in picture naming46 was found but could not be validated in VF tasks23. Kolb, P. Experiments on the Difference Between Semantic Similarity and Relatedness. After accounting for EFs and other cognitive abilities, there were unique genetic and environmental influences on the General Fluency and Semantic-Specific latent factors. Executive functions. Mackworth, N. H. The breakdown of vigilance during prolonged visual search. Appl Neuropsychol Adult. A behavioral analysis of degree of reinforcement and ease of shifting to new responses in a Weigl-type card-sorting problem. Neuropsychologia 33, 261268 (1995). Semantic verbal fluency strategies in amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Acta Neuropsychiatr. Bedi, G. et al. Computational linguistic analysis applied to a semantic fluency task to measure derailment and tangentiality in schizophrenia. Measures of phonemic and semantic verbal fluency, such as FAS and Animal Fluency (Benton, Hamsher, & Sivan, 1989), are often thought to be measures of executive functioning (EF). Soc. Nikolai, T. et al. Verbal fluency tests are recommended for cognitive screening in people with PD. Differ. The lexical VF task is driven by phonological and lexical cues, whereas the sVF task requires attributes of a specific semantic category. The ACE factors, Genetic models of verbal fluency in adolescents and middle-aged adults. While divided attention (WAF-G) was linked to VF performance in the correlation analysis, multiple variables of the spatial attention test (WAF-R) and divided attention test (WAF-G) contributed to VF performance in the prediction analysis. Our findings are also in line with another study investigating the digitalized evaluation of semantic relatedness with WordNet50. Handbook of latent semantic analysis. In comparison to the commonly used approach of evaluating sum scores of correctly produced words, we detected a lucid advantage of an extended feature analysis. Dis. The Reliability and Internal Validity of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Psychol. Both models fit well. Behav. 1, 621 (1948). Particularly, previous studies suggested that executive inhibitory dysfunction and reduced working memory performance lead to a higher number of perseveration errors in healthy participants20,89. As an output, the relatedness between each word-pair was extracted and the mean of all semantic relations within one task was calculated. In a first step, we correlated the different EF scores with the number of correctly produced words across the three semantic VF tasks. Here, the sum scores of each sVF tasks as well as a total sum score across all three tests were included. Besides differences in the strength of the relationship between certain EFs and VF, the EF test constructs themselves might also have partially influenced analysis. Executive Dysfunction Tests in Everyday Tasks The thing about using a non-standardized assessment of executive functioning abilities is that this is where you may see some of the functional performance factors. Further studies ought to develop a fully automated software tool integrating and further developing our feature set. Comprehensive verbal fluency features predict executive function performance, $$sim\left({s}_{1},{s}_{2}\right)= \frac{MAXSHORTESTPATH-length({s}_{1},{s}_{2})}{MAXSHORTESTPATH}$$, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-85981-1. Participants were administered language and EF measures, including the Controlled Oral Word Association Test (FAS version), Animal Fluency, Boston Naming Test (BNT), Vocabulary (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III), Wisconsin Card-Sorting Test (WCST, perseverative responses), and Trail-Making Test-Part B (TMT-B). However, a clear link between working memory and VF performance has so far not been found19,28. It assesses fluent productivity in the verbal domain. Speech Commun. Thus, successful EF performance does not necessarily go along with fewer errors. Schellig, D. & Httig, H. A. Following the testing session, the recorded speech was transcribed and words were coded manually as being either correct answers or errors. Psychol. Assess. & Brewer, G. A. Troyer, A. K., Moscovitch, M. & Winocur, G. Clustering and switching as two components of verbal fluency: Evidence from younger and older healthy adults. Guariglia, C. C. Spatial working memory in Alzheimers disease: A study using the Corsi block-tapping test. Clin Psychol Rev. One of the semantic systems was a hierarchical structured lexical-semantic net of GermaNet52 and GermaNet-Pathfinder76. Behav. Neurosci. Finally, the influence of varying hormonal levels illustrates the impact of inter-individual differences on VF performance. Ten of these tests were taken from the Vienna Testsystem test battery and three were designed with PsyToolkit49. & Jones, R. D. Letter and semantic fluency in Alzheimers, Huntingtons, and Parkinsons dementias. Benjamin, M. J., Cifelli, A., Garrard, P., Caine, D. & Jones, F. W. The role of working memory and verbal fluency in autobiographical memory in early Alzheimers disease and matched controls. MAXSHORTESTPATH=maximum of all shortest paths within GermaNet. 2022 Jan;47(1):72-89. doi: 10.1038/s41386-021-01132-0. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. Concerning the relationship between VF and working memory, some studies showed that better working memory performance leads to less perseveration errors26 and a higher total score of produced words in the VF task22,27. The importance and pervasiveness of EFs has led different fields of study to investigate these control mechanisms with the goal of differentiating the various subdomains of EFs. Two groups of bilinguals and a group of monolingual adults were tested in English with verbal fluency subtests from the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System. investigate group comparisons of EF performance in patients and healthy controls. In the present study selective inhibition was assessed by the Stroop test. Unity and diversity of executive functions: Individual differences as a window on cognitive structure. The present study included separate sum scores for each sVF test as well as a total one across all sVF tasks. Machine learning models can be used to characterize complex behavior with the ultimate goal of identifying and predicting psychiatric diseases47,48. et al. General cognition, verbal, executive and visuospatial function, memory, attention, and motor speed were tested as well as motor function in upper extremities. Neuropsychol. Geriatr. Previous studies showed that the vocabulary size has a positive impact on VF performance54,70. Neuropsychology 32, 6576 (2018). Applying this formula, semantic relatedness is represented by values between 0 and 1. & Levin, H. S. Benton Controlled Oral Word Association Test: reliability and updated norms. R01 AG018386/AG/NIA NIH HHS/United States, K08 AG047903/AG/NIA NIH HHS/United States, R01 MH063207/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/United States, R56 MH063207/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/United States, R01 AG046938/AG/NIA NIH HHS/United States, R01 AG018384/AG/NIA NIH HHS/United States, R01 AG022381/AG/NIA NIH HHS/United States, R01 AG050595/AG/NIA NIH HHS/United States. In this study, we selected a path-based measure which describes the relatedness between concepts. Duncan, J., Emslie, H., Williams, P., Johnson, R. & Freer, C. Intelligence and the Frontal Lobe: The Organization of Goal-Directed Behavior. Verbal fluency tests are a kind of psychological test in which participants have to produce as many words as possible from a category in a given time (usually 60 seconds). VF performance is generally evaluated by calculating the total number of correctly produced items. Distinct cognitive effects of estrogen and progesterone in menopausal women. The ACE factors represent the genetic (A), shared environmental (C), and nonshared environmental influences (E) on each latent variable. Some of these skills are very obvious and others are more inconspicuous. Correlation coefficients of true and predicted executive function variables computed with classical feature set. In both analyses, variables which are not directly linked to EF performance but rather represent overall processing speed or reaction times, were predicted significantly. Surprisingly, FAS and Animal Fluency loaded exclusively on to the language factor and not EF. In the present study 100 trees were used to compute prediction analysis. While some studies report lower scores in VF concomitating with a decline of inhibition performance22 other studies failed to find a link between VF and inhibition20,29. Results showed that all types of sVF features, i.e. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. Conversely, errors were not identified as important features for the prediction of inhibition scores. Definition The total Letter Fluency vs Category Fluency Contrast scaled score as part of the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS) Verbal Fluency Test. Neuropsychology 13, 525531 (1999). In our study, BnMn was significantly associated with decreased scores for both AVLT and Animal Naming, two well-established tests of verbal memory and fluency function. J. Int. Panel D depicts the predictions for genetic influenes (e.g., A. Neuropsychol. Karr, J. E. et al. This assessment was developed over the span of a decade by Dean Delis, Edith Kaplan, and Joel Kramer, and it was published in 2001.The D-KEFS comprises nine tests that were designed to stand alone. Would you like email updates of new search results? 796801 (Springer, New York, 2011). Clin. Neuropsychol. The EF feature with the highest impact on the prediction analysis is mean reaction times of unannounced items of the spatial attention test WAF-R. Thank you for visiting nature.com. Each unique word is represented by a word vector and is part of the vector space. Ten repetitions of the tenfold cross-validation were performed and thus 100 prediction models for each EF target were computed. The model was then validated in the previously held back participants. the meaning of the written word) have to be suppressed. The aim of the study was to elucidate to what extent VF performance can be explained by different subdomains of EFs and which types of EF variables contribute most strongly to the prediction of VF performance. Friedman, N. P. et al. & Levin, H. S. Benton Controlled Oral Word Association Test: reliability and updated norms. Working memory and language: An overview. Various studies report a positive correlation between working memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility performance and the total score of produced words22,27. In Proceedings of the International Conference Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing 2011 420426 (Association for Computational Linguistics, 2011). Arch. Arch. This might be due to the fact that PLS is a non-sparse machine learning method, which will include all features in the prediction model. Executive function variables were predicted based on 43 verbal fluency features. (d) TMT, Forms A and B (Reitan & Wolfson, 1985). Fournier-Vicente, S., Larigauderie, P. & Gaonach, D. More dissociations and interactions within central executive functioning: A comprehensive latent-variable analysis. Psychoneuroendocrinology 59, 2536 (2015). Verbal fluency in Huntingtons disease: A longitudinal analysis of phonemic and semantic clustering and switching. Similar to results in cognitive flexibility tests (Table 1), a smaller search space (r=0.12 p=0.07) and closely related words (r=0.19 p=0.005) led to better results in NBN. PubMed Central Repetition errors in simple and switching sVF tasks as well as category errors in the switching task were found to be important sVF features for predicting EF targets. volume10, Articlenumber:11141 (2020) The examiner gave standardized instructions before starting each test and help was provided by the examiner whenever the participant had any questions regarding the instructions or tests. Background: Verbal fluency tasks are routinely used in clinical assessment and research studies of aphasia. D-KEFS is the first nationally standardized set of tests to evaluate higher level cognitive functions in both children and adults. Appl. (Neurobehavioral Systems, 2018). Sleep Res. A list of extracted sVF features is shown in Table 1. Moreover, Simon Eickhoff and Stefan Heim provided detailed feedback on the overall manuscript. Predictor Importance Estimates by Permutation of Out-of-Bag Predictor Observations for Random Forest of Regression TreesMATLAB. 144, 11471185 (2018). This within-dataset validation represents the best alternative when a fully independently acquired dataset is not yet available. Annu. Although previous research indicates potentially better insights into EF performance by the use of finer grained sVF information, this has not yet been objectively evaluated. Fournier-Vicente, S., Larigauderie, P. & Gaonach, D. More dissociations and interactions within central executive functioning: A comprehensive latent-variable analysis. Only one EF score of NVLT contained characteristic information of working memory performance. 63, 289298 (2000). Google Scholar. 41, 49100 (2000). Additionally, we assume that the complex influence of processing speed on VF performance might be beyond what can be described as a linear relationship. However, additional latency patterns, such as the mean of all latencies within each task and the progress of latencies (namely latency differences) also contributed to the prediction results. FOIA Across all EF domains, the most important sVF features for the prediction results included information about number of correctly produced words, error types, latencies and semantic distances. Epub 2017 Nov 21. and J.A.C. Moreover, sex was found to be associated with differential solving strategies in the VF task84. In particular with regards to cognitive flexibility and inhibition our study demonstrated that an evaluation of sVF sum scores does not capture actual EF performance but rather assesses overall processing speed. Amunts, J., Camilleri, J.A., Eickhoff, S.B. The comparison of these two approaches revealed a larger number of significantly predicted EF scores as well as higher prediction accuracy of the advanced feature set. This might suggest that shorter speech breaks per se do not go along with better EF performance. Neuropsychol. PubMed Central Participants were 813 adolescent twins from the Colorado Longitudinal Twin Sample (mean age 17 years) and 1,290 middle-aged twins from the Vietnam Era Twin Study of Aging (mean age 56 years) who completed multiple measures of EFs, verbal fluency, vocabulary, and nonverbal cognitive ability. Psychol. Neuropsychol. Association Between Timed Up-and-Go and Memory, Executive Function, and Processing Speed. In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles Scientific Reports (Sci Rep) These findings are partially in line with previous studies which apply earlier approaches of cluster and switching quantification to investigate the importance of switches in the sVF task87. Cognition 42, 122 (1992). While these results are primarily related to overall processing speed, an explicit relationship between sVF performance and cognitive flexibility was found in the difference between part B-A of the TMT (r=0.17 p=0.007) as well as in the test results of SPM and WCST. Neurol. EF scores representing cognitive flexibility and inhibitory performance did not include information which are directly linked to EF performance but rather related to general speed. These results also highlight the advantage of the prediction analysis since it revealed concrete variables of EF tests which also represents cognitive abilities not directly linked to specific EF subdomains or representing standard variables. Greater Attention Problems During Childhood Predict Poorer Executive Functioning in Late Adolescence. However, previous studies investigating the involvement of working memory in VF tasks also report ambiguous results: For example, one study assessing a digit-span and spatial-span test did not find a significant relationship between working memory and VF28. In the present study, its utility in the detection of executive deficits in patients with early Parkinson's disease is demonstrated. hWN#9?F}w4BDXxZMI#-;enfR\ U`(i16HRAxI\Va, %ephYa9}@a68991bqcif}j7_c/{G}]?/re!sze'EOjN(y'|VJa[wt>V|YNC`M/QeY. The phonological version is thought to reflect more strongly on executive functioning, as it demands that participants list words using a rule that is not natural to the way words are organized in our brain. Nat. In a second analysis, the possibility of predicting VF from EF scores was investigated by applying supervised learning via a sparse (relevance vector machine; RVM) and non-sparse (partial least squares; PLS) model using 72 EF variables (Supplement1). CAS These batteries, which include tests tapping into the different EF sub-domains, are used for neuropsychological assessment in both clinical settings and lab-based environments. Pakhomov, S. V. S. & Hemmy, L. S. A computational linguistic measure of clustering behavior on semantic verbal fluency task predicts risk of future dementia in the Nun Study. Brain Cogn. 26, 874890 (2004). Plots of significant correlations of executive function tests and total verbal fluency sum score. Quite accurate in screening for dementia. Neuropsychologia 89, 4256 (2016). Raven, J. C., Raven, J. Thus, perseveration and category errors can provide qualitative information when measuring VF performance, in addition to the commonly used total sum of words. Neurosci. Hedden, T. & Yoon, C. Individual differences in executive processing predict susceptibility to interference in verbal working memory. The high impact of cortisol and estradiol in the prediction analysis suggest that fluctuating hormones are essential parameters for predicting VF performance and that intra-individual differences in hormone levels need to be considered when examining the relationship of cognitive functions and speech production tasks. 72, 12 (2006). Data analysis was mainly driven by Susanne Weis, Julia Camilleri, Simon Eickhoff and Julia Amunts, especially involving Susanne Weis and Simon Eickhoffs knowledge of advanced data science. Finally, we investigated sVF features in the prediction of attentional performance (Table 5). On the other hand, most of the latency features did not show a linear relationship with EF performance. Particularly for cognitive flexibility performance, the comprehensive feature set achieved a higher prediction accuracy as compared to the commonly used sum score evaluation. Soc. This result indicates that participants who successfully inhibited proponent behavior in the Stroop task perform better in the VF task. A complete list of the tests is shown in Table1. J. Exp. With regards to non-EF features, the RVM analysis also identified stress hormone cortisol and sex hormone estradiol as highly predictive variables (Fig. Due to the high number of participants and the large battery of EF tests this study provides a detailed view on the involvement of EFs in VF tasks and examines the influence of fluctuating hormones. For example, a test for assessing intelligence might be useful to control for the influence of intelligence on each test, especially on the SPM, making it possible to better differentiate the impact of cognitive flexibility on VF performance. The growing interest in the predictive value of VF tasks might be a result of the increasing use of machine learning algorithms investigating speech production to predict disease specific properties32,33,34. 2). Mach. On the one hand, some systems provide the hierarchical structure of a lexical semantic net52 based on semantic concepts (e.g. 17, 203215 (2003). 1, 17 (2015). The verbal fluency test (VFT) is a short screening test that evaluates cognitive function. As can be seen in Fig. In line with other studies44,45 our analyses indicates that there is a negative correlation between cortisol level and the performance in cognitive functions. Geriatr. Wiener Testsystem. length(s1,s2)=shortest path between synset s1 and synset s2. Adult". These findings highlight the advantages of machine learning approaches which are able to detect complex, non-linear relationships in addition to straightforward linear ones. 9, 106109 (2002). Light, Agurne Sampedro, Javier Pea, Natalia Ojeda, J. Methods 42, 10961104 (2010). Especially sex hormones like estradiol and progesterone have been shown to influence performance in EFs tasks37,38. Henry, J. D. & Crawford, J. R. Verbal fluency deficits in Parkinsons disease: a meta-analysis. For each of these, the five most important sVF features were extracted and correlations with the respective EF target were calculated (Tables 2, 3, 4, 5) to enable a comparison of present results with commonly used univariate analyses. Pauselli, L. et al. 6, 316 (2003). (SCHUHFRIED GmbH, 2016). The recruitment took place in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) via social networks and the Forschungszentrum Jlich mailing list. PubMed Epub 2017 Aug 31. Methods 42, 10961104 (2010). A better understanding of the cognitive demands that are required for the successful performance of VF tasks can potentially lead to a more wide-spread use of VF tests in the clinical context, thus EF tests that tend to be time-consuming and inaccurate. Cognit. J. To address this question, more advanced statistical methods should lead to a more detailed insight into the complexity of VF performance. The association between processing speed and EFs has been also observed in patients with depression67. Benton, A. L., Hamsher, S. K. & Sivan, A. In particular, the reliability of some EF tests is discussed controversially64,65. Barch, D. M. The cognitive neuroscience of schizophrenia. and S.B.E. Google Scholar. Prediction performance was assessed by computing the correlation between real and predicted values. Psychol. We also thank Tobias Kadelka for his help with the automated digitalization of the VF evaluation. Here, rank correlations (Spearman) of sVF features and EF test scores were calculated. Please enable it to take advantage of the complete set of features! Child Adolesc. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. 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Detecting cognitive impairments by agreeing on interpretations of linguistic features. Cogn. The authors declare no competing interests. The verbal fluency test has been described in the clinical neuropsychology literature as an executive function test Ardila, Rosselli, & Puente 1994, Lezak 1995. In the future, this work might contribute to an automated digitalized speech analysis supporting clinicians in diagnostic processes. Semantic Verbal Fluency (SVF) is a neuropsychological assessment that requires respondents to rapidly generate words in specified semantic categories (e.g., different kinds of animals). Dement. In line with these findings, another study investigated the role of processing speed in schizophrenia patients and suggest that especially in working memory tasks assessing speed might be helpful to detect patterns of schizophrenia68. 24, 4653 (2012). Appl. In this analysis only six EF targets were predicted significantly (Fig. J. 1 sturti / Getty Images Test Methods Lang. Surprisingly, FAS and Animal Fluency loaded exclusively on to the language factor and not EF. The testing session included 13 EF tests and 3 semantic VF tasks. Brbion, G. et al. PubMedGoogle Scholar. 30, 755766 (2018). & Emory, E. Executive Function and the Frontal Lobes: A Meta-Analytic Review. The comparison of prediction analysis with and without an extended set of sVF features mainly indicated that sum scores alone capture mostly working memory performance and attention scores. The Stroop test as a measure of performance validity in adults clinically referred for neuropsychological assessment. In particular, it could be shown that divided attention particularly impacts the switching component of the VF tasks. While a consensus does not yet exist about how exactly to subdivide and name EFs, there is general agreement that there are three core EFs: (1) cognitive flexibility, (2) working memory and (3) inhibition1 (but see Karr et al.2,3). Rodrguez-Aranda, C. Reduced writing and reading speed and age-related changes in verbal fluency tasks. Within the EF domain of working memory, the NBN and NVLT were identified as highly predictable EF tests (Table 3). Cortex 55, 97106 (2014). Troyer, A. K., Moscovitch, M., Winocur, G., Alexander, M. P. & Stuss, D. Clustering and switching on verbal fluency: The effects of focal frontal- and temporal-lobe lesions. The site is secure. Here, predictable EF tests within each subdomain are presented and the contributions of sVF features are interpreted. Physiol. Additionally, the results provided a first step towards an automated analysis of VF serving as a predictor for EFs. JINS 15, 438450 (2009). Participants were administered language and EF measures, including the Controlled Oral Word Association Test (FAS version), Animal Fluency, Boston Naming Test (BNT), Vocabulary (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III), Wisconsin Card-Sorting Test (WCST, perseverative responses), and Trail-Making Test-Part B (TMT-B). Ideally, our findings should be validated in a fully independent data set. Automated semantic indices related to cognitive function and rate of cognitive decline. Moreover, cortisol, which is mostly associated with stress, appears to impact EFs, but literature addressing this topic is ambiguous. J. Int. As with all analyses of individual differences such research is dependent on large data sets comprising detailed information on EF and VF performance. knowledge of different machine learning approaches and their implementation in Matlab was essential. Google Scholar. Fine, E. M. & Delis, D. C. Delis-Kaplan executive functioning system. We showed that EF data predict VF performance and that beside cognitive flexibility and inhibition, reaction time and attention play important roles in predicting VF performance. 32, 268280 (2010). Each of the three tasks was performed for 2min. contracts here. The impact of single sVF features on EF performance was quantified based on the feature importance scores of the prediction analysis. 26, 874890 (2004). In addition to the relationship between EFs and VF this study also assessed the influence of hormonal fluctuations to investigate the influence of inter-individual differences. However, it is so far unclear to what extend VF task performance reflects the different subdomains of EFs. and G.P. The role of prefrontal cortex in cognitive control and executive function. A. Camilleri, S. B. Eickhoff, S. Genon, Madeleine Long, Hannah Rohde & Paula Rubio-Fernandez, Scientific Reports In contrast to the first analysis, vigilance was predicted with missed items in CLOCK (r=0.16; p=0.009). This might, at least partly, be based on inter-individual variability of both EFs and VF. Data collection was done by Julia Amunts, supported by research assistants and master students, mentioned in the acknowledgements. Front. Here, the number of correct items in the SPM (r=0.20; p=0.001) and different error types in the WCST revealed the complexity of cognitive requirements and planning ability in conducting the sVF task. EF tests which were designed within PsyToolkit57 do not come with associated test manuals and the selection of variables of these tests was thus based on previous literature58,59,60. It should be noted that the present results concerning the SPM might have to be treated with caution since this test also encompasses aspects of fluid intelligence55,56,57. Psychiatry 41, 5966 (2002). PubMed Kolb, P. DISCO: A Multilingual Database of Distributionally Similar Words. For our feature-set which was later used for the prediction analysis, two different types of semantic relations were extracted: (1) Sequential distance was computed across each consecutive word pair in order of the produced words. who provided improvements for structuring the manuscript as well as improving the wording. Nevertheless, we assume that beside the component of attention per se the involvement of inhibition which is also part of this task might also have an effect on these results. Construct validity of the Trail Making Test: role of task-switching, working memory, inhibition/interference control, and visuomotor abilities. Secondly, intra-individual differences could be further investigated by gathering saliva samples at two different time points. Clustering and switching in unconstrained, phonemic and semantic verbal fluency: The role of age and school type. & Marinis, T. Performance difference in verbal fluency in bilingual and monolingual speakers. People with aphasia produce fewer items in verbal fluency tasks. Newcomer, J. W. et al. Hence, we applied a cross-validation approach within our sample. A. et al. 8 (2014). PubMedGoogle Scholar. title = "Verbal Fluency: Language or Executive Function Measure?". Clinical utility of the N-back task in functional neuroimaging studies of working memory. 10, 16 (2017). For example, a pronounced effect of age was identified by multiple studies showing a significant negative correlation between age and the different aspects of EFs as well as VF performance31,32,33,34. Off. Stoet, G. PsyToolkit: A software package for programming psychological experiments using Linux. The influence of attention on VF performance was also shown in a feature of WAF-G assessing the number of missed items in a divided attention test. Subsequently, an automated software could be used to automatically determine a comprehensive set of VF features including sum scores, errors, latencies and semantic distances from the transcribed data. 117, 1724 (2003). 14, 6672 (2011). Authors Douglas M Whiteside 1 , Tammy Kealey 2 , Matthew Semla 2 , Hien Luu 2 , Linda Rice 2 , Michael R Basso 3 , Brad Roper 4 Affiliations 1 a Psychiatry , University of Iowa , Iowa City , Iowa. Reitan, R. M. Validity of the trail making test as an indicator of organic brain damage. 9, 106109 (2002). Ten replications of the 10-fold cross-validation were performed and thus 100 prediction models were computed. Am. The explicit role of inhibition can be also detected in the variable naming interference of the Stroop test indicating that inhibition is an essential component to successfully produce words within or between two different categories. & Krajewski, J. Relevance vector machine for depression prediction. 4, 104112 (1993). In contrast, inhibition was shown to be independent of intelligence in children with problems performing attention tests36. Another study found relationships between processing speed, working memory, inhibition and VF scores24. Google Scholar. Thus, the results indicated that both letter (phonemic) and category (semantic) fluency are related to language, but the relationship to EF is not supported by the results. The performance in verbal fluency task is represented by the total number of correct words produced across all three semantic VF tasks (t1+t2+t3).The negative correlation in plot b-f are due to the divergent direction of the scores since these variables describe different types of errors, reaction or process times (the higher the worse the performance) while the performance in the verbal fluency is represented by the total amount of correct items (the higher the better). Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate three slides at a time, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump three slides at a time. Furthermore, factor analysis has also been applied to investigate common cognitive structures of VF performance24,30. government site. Souchay, C. & Isingrini, M. Age related differences in metacognitive control: Role of executive functioning. 1, 392395 (2007). Here, a reduction of the 70 EF variables was used. Thus, studies suggest the need for a more differentiated analysis of VF performance16. In particular, Paula et al.87 reported a positive correlation between cognitive flexibility performance, assessed with the TMT, and the sum of correct produced words in the switching task. To sum up, attention might be a crucial aspect for performing VF task. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. For example, TMT is represented by the difference between part A-B94, Stroop by naming interference71, SPM by correct items62 and WCST by non-perseveration errors58, all of which were found to be predictable EF scores. The .gov means its official. Tombaugh, T. N., Kozak, J. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. & Meyer, A. S. Sources of individual differences in the speed of naming objects and actions: the contribution of executive control. Enkavi, A. Recent studies have demonstrated the potential of advanced parameters taken from the VF task, i.e. We expected the extended sVF feature set to outperform the basic analysis of sum scores in predicting EF test results. The current results do not exclude EF as a determinant of verbal fluency, but they do suggest that language processing is the critical component for this task, even without significant aphasic symptoms. T2 - Language or Executive Function Measure? Generally speaking, RF creates a forest of decision trees as weak learners by randomly sampling the features before learning each decision tree. Rev. Both models fit well. Additionally, interpreting models can provide information with regards to which specific features contribute most to accurate predictions. Npj Schizophr. In total, 68 variables were extracted from EF tests. However, some studies (Henry & Crawford, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c) have noted there is also a language component to these tasks. 18, 893900 (2007). In all three significantly predicted EF tests (SPM, TMT, WCST) latencies within the sVF task1 (animals) were identified as important sVF features but did not reveal correlations with EF targets except for latency patterns assessed in i1. Amunts, J., Camilleri, J. Participants were monolingual German speakers and received different levels of education (finished middle school: 10, professional school/job training: 70, finished high school with a university-entrance diploma: 76, university degree: 97). Verbal Fluency : Language or Executive Function Measure? Collection and analyses of the data presented here was approved by the ethics committee of the Heinrich-Heine University Dsseldorf. 64, 447466 (2011). J. Exp. Die Bestimmung der visuellen Merkspanne mit dem Block-Board. Sex and age were regressed out from VF score and from EF data in a cross-validation consistent way. Price, S. E. et al. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. They found that this particular measure of cognitive flexibility correlated well with both simple and switching VF tasks. 2006 65, 19271944 (2012). J. Commun. Applying correlational analyses, studies investigated linear relationships of VF sum scores and different EF domains29. Inhibition was tested using Stop-Signal Task69 (STOP), Simon Task70 (SIMON) and Stroop Test71 (STROOP). 0 Latent semantic analysis48, Word2Vec49). (Hogrefe, Verlag fr Psychologie, Gttingen). Predictors of verbal fluency performance in older adults. However, there are also findings which indicate that there is no relationship between EFs and VF performance30. The various sub-domains of EFs have been shown to be impaired in a number of neurological and psychiatric diseases, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)4, Parkinsons disease5, depression6 and schizophrenia7. Zhu, Z., Novikova, J. In addition to the domain of cognitive flexibility, inhibition tests were also identified to play a role in VF performance. In summary, previous studies indicate the potential of additional quantitative measures for evaluating sVF performance to gain better insight into cognitive processes. Similar but not significant results were also found in the SPM. Hedden, T. & Yoon, C. Individual differences in executive processing predict susceptibility to interference in verbal working memory. Psychol. Azuma, T. Working memory and perseveration in verbal fluency. 23, 201216 (2008). In this study saliva samples of each participant were pooled. Gustavson DE, Friedman NP, Stallings MC, Reynolds CA, Coon H, Corley RP, Hewitt JK, Gordon RL. Pakhomov, S. V. S., Hemmy, L. S. & Lim, K. O. Exp. ArXiv180806570 Cs (2019). In the case that GermaNet contained more than one synset for one word, the synset with closest relatedness to the paired word was selected. J. 64, 135168 (2013). Sci. Unsworth, N., Spillers, G. J. Kail, R. & Salthouse, T. A. & Morgan, G. Increases in cortisol are positively associated with gains in encoding and maintenance working memory performance in young men. https://doi.org/10.1080/00140136308930679 (1963). Nowadays large text corpora and fine grained information of semantic relatedness are available (e.g. With regards to latency patterns our results revealed the importance of speech breaks for the prediction of all domains of EF as well as for attention scores. Geriatr. Hence, a detailed examination of individual differences in searching strategies might improve our understanding of which sVF patterns are related to higher EF performance in certain domains. 11, 403 (2017). Similar findings were reported in our previous study predicting VF sum scores from EF tests variables96. The sVF tasks were presented with Presentation software74 and the participants responses were recorded automatically. In the naming subtask of the Stroop test the participant is asked to name the color in which the word is printed. Order Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS). If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate. Moreover, S.W. A computerized toolbox allowing for an extensive assessment of VF could serve as a screening tool for EFs in a clinical diagnostic process as well as in a research context. examine sex differences in VF strategies19 or to explain the relationship of memory and VF in patients with Alzheimers disease28. cognitive control mechanisms that facilitate goal-directed behavior, and speech problems, it is so far unclear exactly which of the complex subdomains of EFs most strongly contribute to speech performance, as measured by verbal fluency (VF) tasks. Acad. Moreover, other studies suggest that a decrease of speech latencies over the course of the VF task is related to the cluster patterns of the participants. Psychiatry Res. Latency patterns contributed differently to the prediction of different EF scores. animals or fruits), regardless of the initial letter of the word. 295 0 obj <>stream Thus, the selection of main variables of tests designed with Psytoolkit (3/13) were selected based on previous literature. Assessment https://doi.org/10.1177/107319110100800308 (2001). Verbal fluency in male and female schizophrenia patients: Different patterns of association with processing speed, working memory span, and clinical symptoms. A 2-factor solution was found with the 1st factor, language, having significant loadings for BNT and Vocabulary, while the second factor was labeled EF because of significant loading from the WCST and TMT-B. Geriatr. Cogn. Nevertheless, this assessment of semantic information from the sVF task was traditionally done manually and thus was highly time-consuming and partially subjective due to the manual determination and assignment of subcategories46,47. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved). While semantic relatedness was particularly important for predicting errors in NBN, latencies were relevant for NVLT performance. In particular, semantic relatedness was found to be highly associated with EFs and serve as an indicator for mild cognitive impairments which are difficult to detect with sum scores95. Additionally, the prediction analysis highlights the component of processing speed during SPM which was not identified by correlation analysis. Specifically, this corpus contains 1.5 billion tokens including German Wikipedia entries, newspaper articles, parliamentary debates, movie subtitles and more. Set shifting ability . Psychol. A., Eickhoff, S. B., Heim, S. & Weis, S. Executive functions predict verbal fluency scores in healthy participants. This category can be semantic, including objects such as animals or fruits, or phonemic, including words beginning with a specified letter, such as p, for example. The selection of this representative EF variable was based on the test EF manuals and previous literature describing specific main variables of each EF test. Moreover, informed consent was obtained from all participants. Dement. Saliva samples were collected at the beginning and at the end of the test session. Searching for closely related words in the first category within the switching sVF task (cat1 t3) was related to better inhibitory performance (r=0.15 p=0.03). Furthermore, errors were differentiated into perseveration and category errors. To investigate the potential of employing a finer grained sVF feature set to predict EF performance, healthy monolingual German speaking participants (n=230) were tested with a comprehensive EF test battery and sVF tasks, from which features including sum scores, error types, speech breaks and semantic relatedness were extracted. Moreover, informed consent was obtained from all participants. Speech latencies were automatically detected and manually corrected using PRAAT75, and the mean of the speech latencies within each task was calculated. Neuropsychol. Jurafsky, D. & Martin, J. H. Speech and Language Processing (2nd Edition). Psychol. In detail, it is assumed that semantic knowledge and memory as well as cognitive flexibility are required to build semantic associations in sVF tasks whereas the lexical VF tasks require the suppression of grouping words with shared associations19. Using the sophisticated feature set, test variables from all EF domains as well as attention performance and 8/14 EF tests were successfully predicted. Kaller, C. P., Unterrainer, J. M. & Stahl, C. Assessing planning ability with the Tower of London task: Psychometric properties of a structurally balanced problem set. In general, there is consensus on the involvement of EFs in the VF task in healthy controls17 as well as their impairment in patients15,18. Thus, the results indicated that both letter (phonemic) and category (semantic) fluency are related to language, but the relationship to EF is not supported by the results. To sum up, across all subdomains of EFs, a variety of different types of sVF features, including sum scores, error types, sematic relatedness and latencies showed high relevance for the prediction of EF performance. 2022 Dec;131:104358. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2022.104358. 116, 24398 (2019). Alongside the semantic information, the sVF task also provides prosodic information such as speech latencies (speech pauses between each word). In this task participants are asked to produce as many words as possible with a specific initial letter within a specific timeframe (usually 12min). The other semantic system that was used to determine semantic similarity between words was DISCO78 applying a Word2Vec49 approach. A. and S.B.E. These additional variables, assessed within the sVF task, were shown to reflect the complex involvement of executive processes in disorders such as dementia as well as in better differentiation between patients and healthy controls16,40. 2022 Aug 22;22(1):693. doi: 10.1186/s12877-022-03288-w. Psychosom Med. Within each type of theVF task, it is also possible to modulate the demand on EFs by applying a switching component. These authors suggest that processing time reflects general cognitive abilities such as intelligence to some extent98 but may also be related to age99 or personality traits such as extraversion100. J. Psycholinguist. Exp. Measures of phonemic and semantic verbal fluency, such as FAS and Animal Fluency (Benton, Hamsher, & Sivan, 1989), are often thought to be measures of executive functioning (EF). Participants received different levels of education (finished middle school: 8, professional school/job training: 63, finished high school with a university-entrance diploma: 69, university degree: 90). Epub 2018 Mar 7. Based on a comprehensive set of EF scores, results identified cognitive flexibility and inhibition as well as processing speed as strongest predictors for VF performance, but also highlighted a modulatory influence of fluctuating hormone levels. However, some studies (Henry & Crawford, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c) have noted there is also a language component to these tasks. An Overview of Computational Sparse Models and Their Applications in Artificial Intelligence. In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles At first glance, the EF tests identified in the prediction analyses are similar to those of the correlation analyses but include additional variables. Cite this article. Since EFs are also involved in speech production, verbal fluency (VF) tests are integrated in several clinical diagnostic batteries to assess EFs. Features displaying strongest impact on prediction analysis. In particular, the executive functions test selection was mainly supported by Julia Camilleri and Stefan Heims expertise mainly contributed to the discussing of speech-related topics. 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