Discriminative validity of an abbreviated semantic verbal fluency test

Abstract

Semantic verbal fluency (SVF) is one of the most widely used tests for cognitive assessment due to its diagnostic utility (DU). Objective: Our objective is to evaluate the DU to detect cognitive impairment (CI) of a short version of the SVF applied in 30 seconds (SVF1-30). Methods: A prospective sample of consecutive patients evaluated in a Neurology Unit between December 2016 and December 2017 were assessed with the Global Deterioration Scale (GDS), 30-second and 60-second SVF tests (animals), and the Fototest, which includes a fluency task of people’s names. The DU for CI was evaluated by the area under the ROC curve and effect size (“d” Cohen). Results: The study included 1012 patients (256 with CI, 395 with dementia). SVF1-30 shows a good correlation with GDS stage. The DU of SVF1-30 is identical to that of the classical version, applied in 60 seconds, (SVFtotal) for CI (0.89 ± 0.01; p > 0.50), and shows no significant difference for dementia (0.85 ± 0.01 vs. 0.86 ± 0.01, p > 0.15). Discussion: The DU of SVF1-30 is similar to that of the SVFtotal, allowing a reduction in examination time with no loss of discriminative capacity.