Preliminary evidence for the Emotion Word Fluency Test as a unique semantic fluency measure

The current study involved an investigation of the construct validity of the Emotion Word Fluency Test (EWFT) via conceptual replication and extension of Abeare, Freund, Kaploun, McAuley, and Dumitrescu (2017). Participants were 143 undergraduates (X = 19.57, SD = 2.31). Correlations among the EWFT, Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System-Verbal Fluency (letter and category conditions), and the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scales-21: Total and Stress scores were similar to previous research. Prior research with the EWFT did not include an assessment of Theory of Mind. Thus, two Theory of Mind tasks, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test and the Unexpected Outcomes Test, were also investigated. A confirmatory factor analysis with verbal fluency and Theory of Mind as latent variables had good model fit and suggested that the EWFT is both a verbal fluency task as well as a Theory of Mind task. EWFT score was not significantly correlated with the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test score. However, multiple regression analyses indicated that scores on the Unexpected Outcomes Test, which requires understanding and interpreting others' emotions and intentions, accounted for significant variance in EWFT total score beyond the shared variance among verbal fluency tasks. These findings provide initial evidence that the EWFT captures a specific emotion-related component vis-à-vis letter and (nonemotion) category fluency tasks. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).