Phonemic Fluency in Portuguese-speaking Subjects in Brazil: Ranking of Letters

• Published in: Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology Vol. 28; no. 7; pp. 1191 - 1200
• Main Authors: Senhorini, Maurien C.T., Amaro Júnior, Edson, de Mello Ayres, Adriana, de Simone, Adriana, Busatto, Geraldo F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Colchester Taylor & Francis Group 01.10.2006; Taylor & Francis
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Biological and medical sciences; Brazil; Brazilian Portuguese; Cognition - physiology; English; Female; Fluency; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Language; Language Tests; Language Tests - statistics & numerical data; Male; Middle Aged; Miscellaneous; Phonemes; Phonetics; Phonological Processing; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reference Values; Response Time; Semantics; Verbal Behavior - physiology; Word and Letter Association; South America; Brazil; America; Human; Verbal fluency; Word; Language; Portuguese; Phonology; Verbal production
• DOI: 10.1080/13803390500350969
• ISSN: 1380-3395

Phonological verbal fluency studies in English most commonly employ the letters F-A-S as stimuli. We assessed the production of words with these and 14 other letters in Portuguese-speaking healthy subjects (n = 74). The letters F-A-S were ranked among the easiest to produce words in one minute, which is consistent with the findings of studies with English-speaking subjects. There were differences in the overall ranking of letters depending on whether the total word number or the latency between words were considered. Our findings provide a databank of phonological verbal fluency performance using different stimuli in Portuguese, and demonstrate that the ranking of the letters F-A-S is comparable between the English and Portuguese languages in terms of the level of difficulty to produce words, when the task is used in its traditional format.