The Predictive Nature of Age and Gender in the Verbal Fluency Test in the Greek Cypriot Children: Normative Data

Objective: The Children’s Verbal Fluency test (VF) is a neuropsychological test that measures executive function, vocabulary storage, and speed of mental processing. It has been increasingly used in the assessment of children in neurological and psychiatric disorders such as Batten disease, frontal lobe epilepsy, cerebellar tumor, Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and dyslexia. However, there is a paucity of studies presenting normative data. The aim of the present study was to provide normative data for the children’s verbal fluency test in the Cypriot population and to test the criterion validity of the children’s VF in children with ADHD. Method: A total of 749 native Cypriot children aged 7-16 years, recruited from various public schools across the island, took part in the study. Exclusion criteria involved the existence of neurological, psychiatric, cardiological and metabolic diseases and native language other than Greek. Results: Age but not gender was found to be an important factor for the interpretation of scores in the verbal fluency variables. Older children produced more words in both, semantic and phonemic fluency test compared to younger children. Also, the test seemed to discriminate the clinical group of children exhibiting ADHD in semantic verbal fluency as compared to pair-matched controls. Conclusions: Children’s verbal fluency test is a promising tool for the measurement of executive function in the Cypriot population. Further research is needed in children diagnosed with various neurological and psychiatric diseases in order to estimate the validity of the children’s verbal fluency in other clinical populations.