Browsing by Subject "kielellinen sujuvuus"

Executive functions refer to abilities that enable successful regulation of behaviour and other activity appropriate for the current situation. Executive functions can be assessed using different assessment methods. Usually visual fluency is examined as part of a wider assessment of executive functions. Visual fluency is often assessed using tasks of figural fluency. Figural fluency tasks are thought be a nonverbal analogue to tasks of verbal fluency as part of assessment of executive functions. However it remains unclear what executive or cognitive functions can be assessed by using figural fluency tasks. The present thesis set out to examine, how task performance in a figural fluency task is related to task performance in other tasks of cognitive and executive functions. Figural fluency task performance was hypothesized to be related to verbal fluency, visual executive and reasoning functions and motor function. Forty-five adults were assessed using tasks of figural fluency, verbal fluency, visual processing speed, working memory flexibility, visual reasoning and motor functions. Relationships between performance in the figural fluency task and the other tasks were compared. In addition the relationship between figural fluency task performance and visual reasoning task performance was compared to that of figural fluency task performance and performance in the tasks of visual processing speed and working memory flexibility. Lastly, the contribution of motor function to the relationships between performance in the different tasks was investigated through partial correlation. Figural fluency task performance was related to performance in all the tasks, except for semantic verbal fluency (r = .32, p = .123) and motor functions (r = .01, p = .952). Performance in the working memory flexibility task was more strongly related to task performance in the figural fluency task (r = -.64, p < .001), than performance in the visual reasoning task (r = .56, p < .001). Performance in the visual reasoning task was however more strongly related to figural fluency task performance, than performance in the task of visual processing speed (r = -.41, p = .008). Motor function did not contribute to the observed relationships. Results of this thesis corroborate the role of figural fluency tasks in the assessment executive functions and elaborate that figural fluency is related to other visual functions.