Comparison of category and letter fluency tasks through automated analysis
IntroductionCategory and letter fluency tasks are commonly used neuropsychological tasks to evaluate lexical retrieval.MethodsThis study used validated automated methods, which allow for more expansive investigation, to analyze speech production of both category (“Animal”) and letter (“F”) fluency t...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2023-10-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1212793/full |
| _version_ | 1797661563752022016 |
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| author | Carmen Gonzalez-Recober Naomi Nevler Sanjana Shellikeri Katheryn A. Q. Cousins Emma Rhodes Mark Liberman Murray Grossman David Irwin Sunghye Cho |
| author_facet | Carmen Gonzalez-Recober Naomi Nevler Sanjana Shellikeri Katheryn A. Q. Cousins Emma Rhodes Mark Liberman Murray Grossman David Irwin Sunghye Cho |
| author_sort | Carmen Gonzalez-Recober |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | IntroductionCategory and letter fluency tasks are commonly used neuropsychological tasks to evaluate lexical retrieval.MethodsThis study used validated automated methods, which allow for more expansive investigation, to analyze speech production of both category (“Animal”) and letter (“F”) fluency tasks produced by healthy participants (n = 36) on an online platform. Recordings were transcribed and analyzed through automated pipelines, which utilized natural language processing and automatic acoustic processing tools. Automated pipelines calculated overall performance scores, mean inter-word response time, and word start time; errors were excluded from analysis. Each word was rated for age of acquisition (AoA), ambiguity, concreteness, frequency, familiarity, word length, word duration, and phonetic and semantic distance from its previous word.ResultsParticipants produced significantly more words on the category fluency task relative to the letter fluency task (p < 0.001), which is in line with previous studies. Wilcoxon tests also showed tasks differed on several mean speech measures of words, and category fluency was associated with lower mean AoA (p<0.001), lower frequency (p < 0.001), lower semantic ambiguity (p < 0.001), lower semantic distance (p < 0.001), lower mean inter-word RT (p = 0.03), higher concreteness (p < 0.001), and higher familiarity (p = 0.02), compared to letter fluency. ANOVAs significant interactions for fluency task on total score and lexical measures showed that lower category fluency scores were significantly related to lower AoA and higher prevalence, and this was not observed for letter fluency scores. Finally, word-characteristics changed over time and significant interactions were noted between the tasks, including word familiarity (p = 0.019), semantic ambiguity (p = 0.002), semantic distance (p=0.001), and word duration (p<0.001).DiscussionThese findings showed that certain lexical measures such as AoA, word familiarity, and semantic ambiguity were important for understanding how these tasks differ. Additionally, it found that acoustic measures such as inter-word RT and word duration are also imperative to analyze when comparing the two tasks. By implementing these automated techniques, which are reproducible and scalable, to analyze fluency tasks we were able to quickly detect these differences. In future clinical settings, we expect these methods to expand our knowledge on speech feature differences that impact not only total scores, but many other speech measures among clinical populations. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-11T18:47:24Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-19b5f72490234a5795247f829dcc400f |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-11T18:47:24Z |
| publishDate | 2023-10-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-19b5f72490234a5795247f829dcc400f2023-10-11T17:02:09ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782023-10-011410.3389/fpsyg.2023.12127931212793Comparison of category and letter fluency tasks through automated analysisCarmen Gonzalez-Recober0Naomi Nevler1Sanjana Shellikeri2Katheryn A. Q. Cousins3Emma Rhodes4Mark Liberman5Murray Grossman6David Irwin7Sunghye Cho8Penn Frontotemporal Degeneration Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United StatesPenn Frontotemporal Degeneration Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United StatesPenn Frontotemporal Degeneration Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United StatesPenn Frontotemporal Degeneration Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United StatesPenn Frontotemporal Degeneration Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United StatesLinguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United StatesPenn Frontotemporal Degeneration Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United StatesPenn Frontotemporal Degeneration Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United StatesLinguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United StatesIntroductionCategory and letter fluency tasks are commonly used neuropsychological tasks to evaluate lexical retrieval.MethodsThis study used validated automated methods, which allow for more expansive investigation, to analyze speech production of both category (“Animal”) and letter (“F”) fluency tasks produced by healthy participants (n = 36) on an online platform. Recordings were transcribed and analyzed through automated pipelines, which utilized natural language processing and automatic acoustic processing tools. Automated pipelines calculated overall performance scores, mean inter-word response time, and word start time; errors were excluded from analysis. Each word was rated for age of acquisition (AoA), ambiguity, concreteness, frequency, familiarity, word length, word duration, and phonetic and semantic distance from its previous word.ResultsParticipants produced significantly more words on the category fluency task relative to the letter fluency task (p < 0.001), which is in line with previous studies. Wilcoxon tests also showed tasks differed on several mean speech measures of words, and category fluency was associated with lower mean AoA (p<0.001), lower frequency (p < 0.001), lower semantic ambiguity (p < 0.001), lower semantic distance (p < 0.001), lower mean inter-word RT (p = 0.03), higher concreteness (p < 0.001), and higher familiarity (p = 0.02), compared to letter fluency. ANOVAs significant interactions for fluency task on total score and lexical measures showed that lower category fluency scores were significantly related to lower AoA and higher prevalence, and this was not observed for letter fluency scores. Finally, word-characteristics changed over time and significant interactions were noted between the tasks, including word familiarity (p = 0.019), semantic ambiguity (p = 0.002), semantic distance (p=0.001), and word duration (p<0.001).DiscussionThese findings showed that certain lexical measures such as AoA, word familiarity, and semantic ambiguity were important for understanding how these tasks differ. Additionally, it found that acoustic measures such as inter-word RT and word duration are also imperative to analyze when comparing the two tasks. By implementing these automated techniques, which are reproducible and scalable, to analyze fluency tasks we were able to quickly detect these differences. In future clinical settings, we expect these methods to expand our knowledge on speech feature differences that impact not only total scores, but many other speech measures among clinical populations.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1212793/fulldigital speechverbal fluency taskcategory fluency taskletter fluency taskautomated analysis |
| spellingShingle | Carmen Gonzalez-Recober Naomi Nevler Sanjana Shellikeri Katheryn A. Q. Cousins Emma Rhodes Mark Liberman Murray Grossman David Irwin Sunghye Cho Comparison of category and letter fluency tasks through automated analysis Frontiers in Psychology digital speech verbal fluency task category fluency task letter fluency task automated analysis |
| title | Comparison of category and letter fluency tasks through automated analysis |
| title_full | Comparison of category and letter fluency tasks through automated analysis |
| title_fullStr | Comparison of category and letter fluency tasks through automated analysis |
| title_full_unstemmed | Comparison of category and letter fluency tasks through automated analysis |
| title_short | Comparison of category and letter fluency tasks through automated analysis |
| title_sort | comparison of category and letter fluency tasks through automated analysis |
| topic | digital speech verbal fluency task category fluency task letter fluency task automated analysis |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1212793/full |
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