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Semantic and phonemic verbal fluency in blinds.
1Cognitive neuroscience, Psychology Department, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran. vhdnejati@yahoo.com
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
|November 14, 2009
Summary
Acquired blindness impacts executive functions. This study found that blind individuals performed significantly worse on both phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks compared to sighted individuals.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Ophthalmology
Background:
- Sensory loss, such as acquired blindness, can be considered an indirect brain lesion.
- Verbal fluency tasks, encompassing semantic and phonemic aspects, are crucial for assessing executive functions and language capabilities.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate and compare phonemic and semantic verbal fluency in individuals with acquired blindness.
- To investigate the impact of acquired blindness on executive functions mediated by the frontal lobe.
Main Methods:
- A comparative study involving 137 individuals with acquired blindness and 124 sighted individuals.
- Participants completed phonemic verbal fluency (generating words from a letter) and semantic verbal fluency (generating words from a category) tasks under timed conditions.
- Independent samples t-tests were employed to analyze performance differences between the two groups.
Main Results:
- Sighted individuals demonstrated significantly higher performance in semantic verbal fluency compared to blind individuals (p = 0.000).
- Sighted individuals also exhibited significantly superior performance in phonemic verbal fluency compared to blind individuals (p = 0.000).
Conclusions:
- Individuals with acquired blindness show diminished performance in both semantic and phonemic verbal fluency.
- These findings suggest that acquired blindness negatively affects executive functions, specifically those associated with the frontal lobe.
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