Original Research Article
Year: 2019 | Month: November | Volume: 9 | Issue: 11 | Pages: 23-29
Word Fluency in Typically Developing Malayalam Speaking Children
Nisha Melempatt Lohithakshan1, Nuggehalli Puttaveeraiah Nataraja2
1Ph.D. Research Fellow, 2Director & Professor,
Department of Audiology and Speech Language Pathology, J.S.S. Institute of Speech and Hearing, J.S.S. Research Foundation, Musuru, Karnataka, India
Corresponding Author: Nisha Melempatt Lohithakshan
ABSTRACT
Word fluency or verbal fluency is the ability to form and express words that are attuned with the required criteria. The test of word fluency assesses verbal functioning using two tasks i.e., category fluency or semantic fluency task (SF) and letter fluency or phonemic fluency task (PF). The performance of these tasks is related to vocabulary size and speed of lexical access which are directly related to the learning process. The present study aimed at assessing the word fluency in 5-14 year old typically developing Malayalam speaking children and the objectives were (1). To assess the word fluency in terms of semantic fluency and phonemic fluency in typically developing Malayalam speaking children across age and gender. (2).To compare the performance of typically developing Malayalam speaking children in both semantic fluency and phonemic fluency tasks across the age and the gender. The study included 600 typically developing children in the age range of 5-14 years. A cross-sectional research design was used to assess the semantic fluency and phonemic fluency. The results of the study revealed that there were distinct patterns of continuous and linear developmental trend in word fluency. The outcome of the study has also revealed a positive influence of age and gender on the word fluency.
Key words: Word Fluency, Semantic Fluency, Phonemic Fluency.