Performance gaps between English speakers and Chinese-English speakers on classic semantic, action, and emotional verbal fluency

Aims and objectives: Semantic verbal fluency taps into vocabulary knowledge but often elicits poorer performance in bilingual speakers tested in a second language (L2). Few studies have examined verbal fluency tasks that target abstract words and examined test–retest reliability. The present study examined the performance gap between English speakers and Chinese-English speakers on classic semantic, action, and emotional verbal fluency. Methodology: English data were collected for six verbal fluency tasks from 41 English speakers and 18 Chinese-English speakers who spoke English as L2. Verbal fluency performance was reassessed one week later to examine test–retest reliability. Data and analysis: Verbal productivity, valence and arousal, test–retest reliability, and cross-session consistency in producing similar responses in repeated testing were analyzed. Morphological complexity of verbal responses also was compared because Chinese is morphologically simpler than English and emotional verbal fluency may trigger morphologically complex words. Findings/conclusions: Productivity gaps between groups were reliable for all tasks despite practice effects but were smaller for action and emotional verbal fluency. Words produced by Chinese-English speakers were more positive generally and less arousing for specific categories (e.g., “happy”). Both speaker groups were equally likely to produce variable responses with repeated testing, especially for emotional verbal fluency. Words produced by Chinese-English speakers were morphologically simpler than those produced by English speakers for emotional verbal fluency. Originality: Past work on semantic verbal fluency has focused on the retrieval of neutral and concrete words. This is the first study to assess the reliability in performance gaps between speakers tested in L1 and speakers tested in L2 on verbal fluency that targets the retrieval of abstract and emotional-laden words. Significance: Verbal fluency is one of the most frequently employed tasks in neuropsychological assessments. The findings demonstrate the effects of language proficiency on performance across verbal fluency variants, group differences in valence and arousal, the effects of repeated testing, and the effects of linguistic features on responses produced.