Medicinski vjesnik, Vol. 43 No. (1-4), 2011.
Original scientific paper
Phonemic verbal fluency test (FAS test) in patients with traumatic brain injury
Dubravko Tršinski
Žarko Bakran
Abstract
Executive dysfunctions are common cognitive sequelae of the traumatic brain injury (TBI). Tests of verbal fluency are the most widely used measures for assessing executive functions. The first aim of this research was to investigate discriminative validity of the Croatian version of the test of phonemic verbal fluency-FAS, by comparing 50 patients after severe TBI versus 50 healthy controls. Furthermore, the group of TBI patients was subdivided on the basis of neuroradiological findings to investigate the influence of the laterality of the focal lesions. Also a subgroup of 25 healthy patients was retested two months later, to investigate reliability. Results indicate that the TBI group performed much worse than controls on FAS test (p< 0,001) although this two groups did not differ significantly on a test of fluid intelligence ( p>0,07). In the group of TBI patients we found no effect of the lateralization of the focal deficits on verbal fluency. Test – retest reliability was acceptable (r= 0, 73) but the internal consistency was modest (Cronbach α= 0,64).
Keywords
verbal fluency; traumatic brain injury; executive functions; FAS test; Croatian version
Hrčak ID:
198001
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2011.
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