Phonemic verbal fluency is associated with pediatric anxiety disorders: evidence from a community study.
BACKGROUND
Anxiety disorders typically begin in childhood and adolescence and predict risk for many problems throughout life. Although some neuropsychological correlates have been described, more research is needed, particularly in adolescents. This study compares neurocognitive characteristics of anxious adolescents with and without comorbidity to externalizing disorders to those of typically developing comparison (TDC) adolescents and adolescents with externalizing disorders alone.


METHODS
The study included 57 adolescents 12-18 years of age (TDC, n=23; anxiety, n=16; externalizing, n=11; comorbid, n=7). We used a neuropsychological battery to assess eight domains: Orientation, attention, visual perception, memory, arithmetic, language, praxis, and executive function.


RESULTS
Multivariate analysis of variance revealed a main effect of group in the neurocognitive domains evaluated (F8,48=2.32, p=0.034, ηp(2)=0.279). Post-hoc analysis revealed that executive functions score differed among groups, specifically in the task of verbal fluency (F[df=3]=5.01, p=0.004, ηp(2)=0.221), with both the anxious groups (anxiety and comorbid) presenting a lower score than the TDC and externalizing groups. This effect was independent of age, intelligence, and levels of education.


CONCLUSIONS
Verbal fluency is specifically impaired in adolescents with anxiety disorders. This extends results from neuroimaging research implicating prefrontal areas in pediatric anxiety disorder neurobiology, and has potential implications to new therapeutics.
1 Anxiety Disorders Program for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (PROTAIA), Department of Developmental and Personality Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) , Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil .
Rudineia
R
Toazza
Giovanni Abrahão
GA
Salum
Suzielle Menezes
SM
Flores
Rafaela Behs
RB
Jarros
Daniel S
DS
Pine
Jerusa Fumagalli
JF
de Salles
Gisele Gus
GG
Manfro
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology*; D015897:Comorbidity; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D013064:Speech Disorders / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology*