VERBAL FLUENCY AND VERBAL COMPREHENSION ABILITIES IN SYNONYM TASKS

Generating different synonym candidates and evaluating these candidate s with respect to their synonymy with the stimulus word are two compon ents of solving an open synonym task, which requires giving synonyms f or a given word (cf. Janssen, Hoskens, & De Boeck, 1993). Separate sub tasks were designed to identify these components. It is shown in this study that the generation component ability is primarily related to ve rbal fluency abilities, whereas the evaluation component ability is pr imarily related to verbal comprehension abilities. Moreover, evidence is given that these two component abilities can account for the correl ations of the open synonym task with other ability measures.