Category fluency test: Normative data for English- and Spanish-speaking elderly

Category fluency tasks are an important component of neuropsychological ass essment, especially when evaluating for dementia syndromes. The growth in t he number of Spanish-speaking elderly in the United States has increased th e need for appropriate neuropsychological measures and normative data for t his population. This study provides norms for English and Spanish speakers, over the age of 50, on 3 frequently used measures of category fluency: ani mals, vegetables, and fruits. In addition, it examines the impact of age, e ducation, gender, language, and depressed mood on total fluency scores and on scores on each of these fluency measures. A sample of 702 cognitively in tact elderly, 424 English speakers, and 278 Spanish speakers, participated in the study. Normative data are provided stratified by language, age, educ ation, and gender. Results evidence that regardless of the primary language of the examinee, age, education, and gender are the strongest predictors o f total category fluency scores, with gender being the best predictor of pe rformance after adjusting for age and education. English and Spanish speake rs obtained similar scores on animal and fruit fluency, but English speaker s generated more vegetable exemplars than Spanish speakers. Results also in dicate that different fluency measures are affected by various factors to d ifferent degrees.