Preliminary Arabic normative data of neuropsychological tests: the verbal and design fluency.

Objectives: The objective of the present study was to provide preliminary norms for three fluency tests in Arabic language: the verbal fluency (phonemic and semantic) and design fluency tests.

Methods: Three Arabic letters have been chosen for the phonemic fluency task, in accordance with the letter selection procedure described in the development of the standard test. Animal fluency was chosen for the semantic fluency, and the Five-Point test for the design fluency test.

Participants: An Arabic speaking sample of 215 healthy participants (125 male, 90 female), with age ranging from 18-59 years and with different educational levels, were selected for this study.

Results: Age and education significantly influenced performance in the verbal phonemic and semantic tasks, but not in the design fluency test. No gender effect was found in any of the three tasks. The education effects were linear, while age effects appeared to be curvilinear.

Conclusion: This pattern is congruent with that reported in the western literature. The implications of these results in relation to the development of Arabic norms were discussed. It was concluded that these tests could be used in an Arabic-speaking population with due considerations to the effects of age and education.