SynthesisJournal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD2023
Phonological and Semantic Fluency in Alzheimer's Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
Synthesis in Journal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 26 citations in OpenAlex.
- The effect of exercise on the improvement of verbal fluency, spatial working memory, and the three major executive functions in elderly alzheimer's patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2025Pooled it
- Item-Level Analysis of Category Fluency Test Performance: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Studies of Normal and Neurologically Abnormal Ageing.Neuropsychology review · 2025Pooled it
- Diagnostic utility of speech-based biomarkers in mild cognitive impairment: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Age and ageing · 2025Pooled it
- Cognitive and Demographic Associations of Dementia-Related Behavioural Changes in Adults With an Intellectual Disability: Findings From the IDS-TILDA Study.Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR · 2026Article
- The association of mood disorders and mild cognitive impairment with language performance in older adults: insights from a community healthcare setting.Frontiers in dementia · 2026Article
- The evolution of phonemic verbal fluency test: bridging tradition with contemporary insights.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Socio-demographic variables among a group of patients with cognitive decline.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Italian intersocietal recommendations for restructuring the diagnostic-therapeutic pathway for the implementation and appropriate use of anti-amyloid monoclonal antibodies in Alzheimer's disease.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2025Review
- The Interplay of Vocabulary, Working Memory, and Math Anxiety in Predicting Early Math Performance.Journal of Intelligence · 2025Article
- Normative Data for the Famous People Fluency Test in the Adult French-Quebec Population and Validation Study in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's Disease.Archives of clinical neuropsychology : the official journal of the National Academy of Neuropsychologists · 2025Article
- Networks for proper versus common name retrieval: insights from causal mapping and new hypotheses.Brain communications · 2025Review
- Beyond the left cerebral hemisphere: bilateral language lateralization in healthy aging and its clinical implications.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2025Article
- An fNIRS-based investigation of cerebral hemodynamic responses during verbal fluency task and n-back task in individuals with mild cognitive impairment.Frontiers in neurology · 2025Article
- Right hemisphere engagement in language abilities in older adults: indication of compensation rather than decline.Frontiers in aging · 2025Article
- After cochlear implantation in older adults, enhanced working memory does not fully mediate the relationship between CI and improved semantic fluency.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2025Article
- Using a single neuropsychological task as a red flag creates false security.Neuro-oncology practice · 2024Article
- Validation of regression-based change formulae for mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease.Alzheimer's & dementia (Amsterdam, Netherlands)Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundSemantic and Phonological fluency (SF and PF) are routinely evaluated in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). There are disagreements in the literature regarding which fluency task is more affected while developing AD. Most studies focus on SF assessment, given its connection with the temporoparietal amnesic system. PF is less reported, it is related to working memory, which is also impaired in probable and diagnosed AD. Differentiating between performance on these tasks might be informative in early AD diagnosis, providing an accurate linguistic profile.
objectiveCompare SF and PF performance in healthy volunteers, volunteers with probable AD, and patients with AD diagnosis, considering the heterogeneity of age, gender, and educational level variables.
methodsA total of 8 studies were included for meta-analysis, reaching a sample size of 1,270 individuals (568 patients diagnosed with AD, 340 with probable AD diagnosis, and 362 healthy volunteers).
resultsThe three groups consistently performed better on SF than PF. When progressing to a diagnosis of AD, we observed a significant difference in SF and PF performance across our 3 groups of interest (p = 0.04). The age variable explained a proportion of this difference in task performance across the groups, and as age increases, both tasks equally worsen.
conclusionThe performance of SF and PF might play a differential role in early AD diagnosis. These tasks rely on partially different neural bases of language processing. They are thus worth exploring independently in diagnosing normal aging and its transition to pathological stages, including probable and diagnosed AD.
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