title: The Relationship Between Educational Years and Phonemic Verbal Fluency (PVF) and Semantic Verbal Fluency (SVF) Tasks in Spanish Patients Diagnosed With Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, and Psychotic Bipolar Disorder.
abstract: Semantic and verbal fluency tasks are widely used as a measure of frontal capacities. It has been well described in literature that patients affected by schizophrenic and bipolar disorders present a worse execution in these tasks. Some authors have also noted the importance of educational years. Our objective is to analyze whether the effect of cognitive malfunction caused by apathology is superior to the expected effect of years of education in phonemic verbal fluency (PVF) and semantic verbal fluency (SVF) task execution. A total of 62 individuals took part in this study, out of which 23 were patients with schizophrenic paranoid disorder, 11 suffered from bipolar disorder with psychotic symptomatology, 13 suffered from bipolar disorder without psychotic symptomatology, and 15 participants were nonpathological individuals. All participants were evaluated with the PVF and SVF tests (animals and tools). The performance/execution results were analyzed with a mixed-model ANCOVA, with educational years as a covariable. The effect of education seems to be more determined by PVF FAS tests than by SVF. With PVF FAS tasks, the expected effect of pathology disappears when the covariable EDUCATION is introduced. With SVF tasks, the effect continues to be significant, even though the EDUACTION covariable dims such effect. These results suggest that SVF tests (animals category) are better evaluation tools as they are less dependent on the patients' education than PVF FAS tests.
authors.affiliation: From the Faculty of Psychology (EG-L), Basic Psychology II Department, University Complutense; Laboratory of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience (FM), Centre of Biomedical Technology (CTB), Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and Technological University of Madrid (UPM); Faculty of Psychology (MAC, EP-M), Department of Methodology of Behavioral Sciences, University Complutense; and Acute Inpatients Unit (JDM), Dr R. Lafora Psychiatric Hospital, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Eduardo
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: García-Laredo
authors.forename: Fernando
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Maestú
authors.forename: Miguel Ángel
authors.initials: MÁ
authors.lastname: Castellanos
authors.forename: Juan D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Molina
authors.forename: Elisa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Peréz-Moreno
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001714:Bipolar Disorder / Q000150:complications*; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology*; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D011581:Psychological Tests; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000150:complications*