Effects of age, education, and gender on verbal fluency in healthy adult Arabic-speakers in Egypt.
The objective of this study is to establish the effects of age, gender, and education and to provide preliminary normative data for letter and category fluency tasks in the Egyptian Arabic-speaking population. We evaluated 139 cognitively healthy volunteers aged 20-93 by adapting the letter and category verbal fluency tasks for the Egyptian population. On the letter fluency task, mean number of words generated in one-minute beginning with the Arabic letter "Sheen" (pronounced "sh") was 8.14 words per minute (SD = 3.25). Letter fluency was significantly influenced by education. On category fluency tasks, mean number of animal names generated in one minute was 14.63 words (SD = 5.28). Category fluency was significantly influenced by age and education. We were able identify that age significantly affects category fluency while education significantly affected both letter and category fluency. We were also able to provide preliminary normative data for both tasks in the Egyptian population.
a Department of Psychiatry , United Arab Emirates University , Al-Ain , United Arab Emirates.
Karim
K
Abdel Aziz
b Geriatrics and Gerontology Department, Faculty of Medicine , Ain Shams University , Cairo , Egypt.
Mohamed S
MS
Khater
c Neurology Department, Faculty of Medicine , Ain Shams University , Cairo , Egypt.
Tamer
T
Emara
b Geriatrics and Gerontology Department, Faculty of Medicine , Ain Shams University , Cairo , Egypt.
Heba M
HM
Tawfik
b Geriatrics and Gerontology Department, Faculty of Medicine , Ain Shams University , Cairo , Egypt.
Doha
D
Rasheedy
b Geriatrics and Gerontology Department, Faculty of Medicine , Ain Shams University , Cairo , Egypt.
Ahmed S
AS
Mohammedin
b Geriatrics and Gerontology Department, Faculty of Medicine , Ain Shams University , Cairo , Egypt.
Mohammad F
MF
Tolba
d Psychiatry Department , Ain Shams University , Cairo , Egypt.
Dina Aly
DA
El-Gabry
d Psychiatry Department , Ain Shams University , Cairo , Egypt.|e Old Age Psychiatry Service , Black Country Partnership NHS Foundation NHS Trust , West Bromwich , United Kingdom.|f Psychiatry Department , University of Warwick , Coventry , United Kingdom.
Tarik
T
Qassem
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D004522:Educational Status; D004534:Egypt; D005260:Female; D064368:Healthy Volunteers / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D055815:Young Adult
Arabic; Egypt; category; fluency; letter