engleski

Application of the controlled oral word association test in a Croatian sample

The Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT) is widely used in clinical neuropsychology, primarily as a measure of verbal fluency, but also as a measure of executive skills such as working memory, planning and strategy. Verbal fluency tasks such as the COWAT appear to be relatively easy task to perform and yet highly selective lesions have been observed to cause fairly substantial deficits in performance. In order to perform this task successfully, the study participant must develop a strategy for retrieving words beginning with the stimulus letter ; whilst complying with rules that forbid them to mention proper nouns and serial word stems with changed word endings. Study participants are also requested not to repeat words. The need to recall what has previously been said presumably represents a burden to working memory. The COWAT forms part of the Neuropsychological Test Battery which has been profitably employed in a number of clinical drug trials, including studies of AN1792- 201 (an amyloid lowering treatment for use in patients with Alzheimer's disease) and a recent study of the chelating agent PBT2. The COWAT was also employed in the EXPRESS trial of rivastigmine in patients with Parkinson's disease dementia and routinely features in cognitive assessment batteries for a variety of both psychiatric and neurological disorders. Although the COWAT is increasingly employed in international trials, very little is known about the utility of the English version of the test in non-English speaking populations. English versions of the test employ letter stimuli for which native English speakers are most fluent, and these letters may be inappropriate for use with Croatian speakers. Aim: The aim of this study was to find out the word frequency for all letters in the Croatian alphabet in order to identify the most appropriate letters for use with Croatian speaking study participants. This methodology replicates the investigation originally conducted with English speakers and by which the most appropriate letters were selected for use. We also sought to determine whether there are any differences between Croatian and English speakers with respect to fluency. Subjects and methods: There were 77 healthy participants, age ranged from 18 to 52 years. Among them, there were 21 (27.3%) male and 56 (72.7%) female. All study participants were given 1 minute per letter for all the letters of the Croatian alphabet. Results: In our sample we detected that participants generated most frequently words starting with the letters "K" (M-13.32) "P" (M-12.01), "S" (M-11.77) and "M" (M-11.48). Conclusion: Our preliminary results suggest that there are differences among most frequent letters in COWAT between Croatian and English speakers. We recommend the use of the letters "K", "P", "S" and "M" in studies of verbal fluency (COWAT) performance conducted with Croatian speaking individuals.

Controlled Oral Word Association Test; COWAT; verbal fluency

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