engleski

Application of the Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT) in Croatian speaking study participants

Introduction: Tests of verbal fluency, such as the COWAT are a valuable measure of cognitive skills such as working memory, planning and strategy. The COWAT is increasingly employed in international trials, especially in dementia drug trials. English versions of the test employ letter stimuli for which native English speakers are most fluent. However, the letter stimuli employed with English speaking study participants may well be inappropriate for use with non-English speaking populations. Aim: The aim of this study was to find out the frequency of words starting with letters from the Croatian alphabet, and to see are there any differences between Croatian and English. Subjects and methods: Among 66 normal participants there were 50 students of Medicine or Defectology and 16 medical staff from Psychiatric Hospital Vrapce, age ranged from 18 to 52 years. Among them there were 17 (25, 8%) male and 49 (74, 2%) female. We administered COWAT to all participants due to standard procedure on all 30 letters of Croatian alphabet. Results: In our sample we detected that participants generated most frequently words starting with letter "K" (WM3.76), "P" (M=12.47), "S" (M=12.23) and "M" (M=12.03). Conclusion: Our preliminary results suggest that there are differences among most frequent letters in COWAT between Croatian and English. We recommend the use of the letters "K", "P", "S" and "M" in studies of COWAT performance conducted with Croatian speaking individuals.

Verbal fluency; Cognitive skills; COWAT

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