Examining qualitative and quantitative features of verbal fluency tasks to investigate the mental lexicon in postpartum women: A neuropsychological approach of executive functions applied to language.

BARRAL, PAULA EUGENIA; MIRANDA, AGUSTÍN RAMIRO; CORTEZ, MARIELA VALENTINA; SCOTTA, ANA VERONICA; SORIA, ELIO ANDRÉS

Psychology of Language and Communication

University of Warsaw, Faculty of Psychology

Año: 2022

1234-2238

During postpartum, women experience neurobiological and psychosocial variations that impact language functioning. From neuropsychology, word production on Verbal Fluency Tasks (VFTs) is a cognitive indicator to evince associative (semantic categorization and phonological analysis) and executive (inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility) processes. Also, a linguistic analysis allows understanding production strategies (for example, orthographic and use of rhymes), with multivariate statistics facilitating cluster identification of the most common words. Considering these approaches, this work aimed to optimize semantic and phonological VFTs analysis for the identification of postpartum women´s mental lexicon using quantitative and qualitative scores. These outcomes were evaluated together with sociodemographic and reproductive data of 100 postpartum women (Argentina). Mental lexicon description was statistically improved and showed that multiparous women clustered words more concisely than others, with increased correct words and better organizational strategies. Concluding, female reproductive history improved VFTs outcomes, with factor analysis optimizing the neuropsychological study of language structuring.