Swan, Zoe (2015) Verbal Fluency: An Intervention Designed to Increase Performance on a Verbal Fluency Task in Cognitively Unimpaired Adults. Honours thesis, University of Southern Queensland. (Unpublished)
Abstract
Patients who have suffered a serious head injury often experience a significant decrease in verbal fluency. Interventions designed to increase verbal fluency are still in the experimental phase with a need for a successful intervention that is easy to administer, both in the hospital and at home. It is possible that practice at semantic tasks of verbal fluency could assist in the activation of other semantic networks aiding in the recovery of speech. However before trialling such an intervention on a cognitively impaired population it is important to gauge its success on a cognitively unimpaired population to determine if improvement should be expected. This research investigated if the ability to rapidly generate words belonging to semantic categories improved with practice in adults who had never suffered a serious head injury. Participants were both male and female ranging from 18 to 72 years old and spoke fluent English. A repeated measures design was used with sixty participants assigned to either an Experimental, Active Control or Passive Control condition. A semantic verbal fluency task (VFT) with the three categories: Animals, fruit and vegetables and countries was administered as the pre- and post-test. An intervention lasting 10 minutes was administered between the two tasks. The effectiveness of the intervention was measured by the number of correct words produced pre-test compared to post-test. Participants in the Experimental group were given additional practice at a semantic VFT, the Active Control group were given practice at a phonemic VFT and participants in the Passive Control group experienced a lapse of time with no VFT’s administered. Results for the Experimental group were non-significant t(19) = -.51, p = .619, d = .11, with relatively the same number of words been produced pre-test to post-test. A nonsignificant result was also found in the Passive Control group t(19) = -1.26, p = .223, d = .88. PERFORMANCE ON A VERBAL FLUENCY TASK v However the Active Control group showed a statistically significant increase in the number of words produced pre-test to post-test t(19) = -3.92, p = .001, d = .28. The results indicate that practice at recalling members of a semantic category does not increase the ability to retrieve words from another semantic category. However future trials may yield an increase in words if the trials are extended over a several sessions. The statistically significant results in the Active Control group imply that practice at phonemic VFT’s could assist the ease with which words are retrieved from a semantic category. These results imply that trials with cognitively impaired individuals using practice at phonemic VFT’s to increase performance on a semantic VFT are viable. Future research exploring the benefits of both practice at a semantic VFT and a phonemic VFT over several sessions would produce additional useful information to extend on the findings of this experiment.
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| Item Type: | Thesis (Non-Research) (Honours) |
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| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Additional Information: | Current UniSQ staff and students can request access to this thesis. Please email research.repository@unisq.edu.au with a subject line of SEAR thesis request and provide: Name of the thesis requested and Your name and UniSQ email address |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Historic - Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - School of Psychology and Counselling (1 Jan 2015 - 31 Dec 2021) |
| Supervisors: | Gerry Tehan |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Science (Honours) |
| Date Deposited: | 26 Aug 2025 00:38 |
| Last Modified: | 26 Aug 2025 00:38 |
| Fields of Research (2008): | 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1799 Other Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 179999 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences not elsewhere classified |
| Fields of Research (2020): | 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5299 Other psychology > 529999 Other psychology not elsewhere classified |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/52798 |
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