DECREASE IN PERFORMANCE ON THE VERBAL FLUENCY TEST AS A FUNCTION OF TIME - EVALUATION IN A YOUNG HEALTHY SAMPLE

Participants were asked to generate as many words as possible using la rge and small category sizes with the initial letter and semantic cate gory search strategies. The production of each participant for each 15 -s time slice on each task was recorded. The results revealed that on all fluency tasks, the production in the initial time slice was highes t and also of greatest frequency. As time on task increased the produc tion decreased, as did the word frequency of the items produced. The r esults are consistent with the notion that there is a store of high-fr equency words accessed during the early trials of the fluency tasks an d as this store becomes exhausted the production and the word frequenc y decreases.