engleski

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

Introduction: Tests of verbal fluency, such as the COWAT are a valuable measure of cognitive skiils sudi as wortdng memory, pfanning and strategy. The COVVAT is increasing!y employed in intemational triais, especially in dementia drug trials. English versions of the test emp!oy letter stimuli for which native English speakers are most fluent. Hovvever, 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 vvords starting with ietters from the Croatian aiphabet, and to see are there any differences betvveen Croatian and English.Subj@ei$ 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 ali participants due to standard procedure on ali 30 Ietters of Croatian aiphabet, Results: In our sample we deteded that participants generated most frequently words starting with letter WK" (M=13J6) (M=12.47), MSH (M= 12.23) and "M* <M=12.03).Conoluslon: Our prefiminary results suggest that there are differences among most frequent Ietters in COVVAT betvveen Croatian and English. We recommend the use of the ietters "K\ MP\ MS"and MM" in studies of COVVAT performance conducted with Croatian speaking individuals.

COWAT; dementia; alphabet; differences between Croatian end English

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