Relationship of the verbal fluency index profile with the variables age, educational level, and sex in a group of schoolchildren

Abstract

This is a quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional, and correlational study, whose purpose was to relate the profile of the verbal fluency index-VFI with the variables of age, sex, and educational level of a schoolchildren group from an official educational institution in the department of Sucre, Colombia. The sample consisted of 390 students distributed in 176 of BPE and 214 of BSE to whom the verbal fluency test reviewed by Ardilla and Rosselli (2007) was administered. The Microsoft Excel 19.0 statistical program was used for data coding and the EZAnalyze version 2.5 add-in was used for processing. The results showed that the phonological verbal fluency, semantic, and general index tests were below the normative mean. The association between the VFI with the variables age and school grade was confirmed with the parametric test of Pearson's coefficient with a high level of significance p=0.000. However, gender had no influence on performance because there was no correlation. It is concluded that the VFI increases with age and school grade, factors that imply that as they increase, it will allow a progressive tendency to access the lexicon, the ability to name words according to phonemic indication, and from a given category.