A normative study of lexical verbal fluency in an educationally-diverse elderly population

Objective Lexical fuency tests are frequently used to assess language and executive function in clinical practice. We investigated the infuences of age, gender, and education on lexical verbal fuency in an educationally-diverse, elderly Korean population and provided its' normative information. Methods We administered the lexical verbal fuency test (LVFT) to 1676 community-dwelling, cognitively normal subjects aged 60 years or over. Results In a stepwise linear regression analysis, education (B=0.40, SE=0.02, standardized B=0.506) and age (B=-0.10, SE=0.01, standardized B=-0.15) had signifcant efects on LVFT scores (p<0.001), but gender did not (B=0.40, SE=0.02, standardized B=0.506, p>0.05). Education explained 28.5% of the total variance in LVFT scores, which was much larger than the variance explained by age (5.42%). Accordingly, we presented normative data of the LVFT stratifed by age (60-69, 70-74, 75-79, and ≥80 years) and education (0-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12, and ≥13 years). Conclusion The LVFT norms should provide clinically useful data for evaluating elderly people and help improve the interpretation of verbal fuency tasks and allow for greater diagnostic accuracy.