**3.2.3 Verbal fluency components**

*Phonemic fluency.* Clusters are scored for groups of phonemic words, or words that are similar based on phonemic rules for each letter. Troyer and colleagues (1997) defined parameters for scoring clusters, including: (a) words beginning with the same first two letters, (b) rhyming words, and (c) words that are the same syllabic length and differ only by a vowel sound. For example, *follow, fog, fond, foster, forget* is a cluster of four because the words all begin with the same phoneme, and the cluster size begins with the second word of a cluster. Each word that is not classified in a group of related phonemic words is scored as a cluster of zero. The *number of clusters* is defined as the total sum of individual clusters, including clusters of zero. The *cluster value* is defined as the sum number of consecutive related words excluding the first word of each grouping, or the sum of the values assigned to the clusters. *Switches* are defined as any break between clusters, including clusters of zero.

*Semantic fluency.* In the semantic fluency task, clusters are composed of words that are semantically related. Troyer's method defines the categories for finding semantic clusters in "Animals" as living environments, zoological categories, and human use, with each supraordinate category containing specific exemplars. The *cluster size* begins with the second word of a cluster. For example the group, *cow, horse, chicken,* and *rooster,* is scored as a cluster of three because they are all farm animals. Number of clusters, cluster value, and switches were calculated as discussed above.
