The effects of age, education, and ethnicity on verbal fluency

A group of 317 healthy participants between 54 and 99 years of age performe d a verbal fluency task. The participants included Chinese, Hispanic, and V ietnamese immigrants, as well as White and African American English speaker s. They were given 1 min to name as many animals as possible in their nativ e language. The results showed that more animal names were produced by youn ger people and those with more education. Language background was also an i mportant factor: The Vietnamese produced the most animal names and the Span ish speakers produced the fewest. The exaggerated difference between these two groups is attributed to the fact that Vietnamese animal names an short (predominantly 1 syllable) while the Spanish animal names are longer than a ny other language in this study (2 and 3 syllables per word). Finally, alth ough the ethnic groups named different animals, and appeared to vary in the variety of animal names they used, these factors did not affect overall ve rbal fluency performance.