Assessment of Automatic and Controlled Retrieval Using Verbal Fluency Tasks.

ABSTRACT: Category and letter verbal fluency assessment is widely used in basic and clinical research. Yet, the nature of the processes measured by such means remains a matter of debate. To delineate automatic (free-associative) versus controlled (dissociative) retrieval processes involved in verbal fluency tasks, we carried out a psychometric study combining a novel lexical-semantic retrieval paradigm and structural equation modeling. We show that category fluency primarily engages a free-associative retrieval, whereas letter fluency exerts executive suppression of habitual semantic associates. Importantly, the models demonstrated that this dissociation is parametric rather than absolute, exhibiting a degree of unity as well as diversity among the retrieval measures. These findings and further expl

SUBMITTER: Marko M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10478347 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature