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Verbal fluency is, basically, the ease with
which a person can produce words. There are several tests
of this ability, but most of them involve some sort of
category like fruits, words beginning with the letter
Q or animals. The person being tested is asked to name
as many different examples of the category as they can
in a fixed period of time, such as a minute.
So most tests of this sort involve more than just producing
lots of words, they also involve some conscious mental
processing as well. Doing a task like coming up with
many different types of fruit names involves using the
association area of the brain, the prefrontal cortex.
Studies using brain scanning have shown that this part
of the brain is especially active during such tests.
In the Child of our Time programme called Read My Lips, we saw that
the children differed in how fluent they were. Being
reasonably fluent with words is important for communication.
However, being able to produce lots of words very quickly
is not a measure of intelligence!
On the next page are some tests
to measure your verbal fluency.
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