Semantic Fluency and Phonemic Fluency: Regression-based Norms for the Portuguese Population

The main goal of this study was to produce adjusted normative data for the Portuguese population on two verbal fluency measures: the semantic fluency test (animals category) and the phonemic fluency test (letters M, R, and P). The study included 950 community-dwelling individuals (624 womenand 326 men) aged between 18 and 98 (mean 57.8, SD 19.0), who had educational backgrounds ranging from 0 to 20 years (mean 8.8, SD 5.2). The results showed that age and education were significantly associated with semantic fluency and phonemic fluency performance. These demographic characteristics accounted for 42 of the semantic fluency and between 23 and 31 of the phonemic fluency performance variance. No significant sex effects were found. The normative data are presented as regression-based algorithms to adjust test scores for age and education, with subsequent correspondence between adjusted scores and percentile distribution.