Psychology & Neuroscience © 2016 American Psychological Association

2016, Vol. 9, No. 1, 54 – 67 1983-3288/16/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pne0000041

Normative Data and Evidence of Validity for the Rey Auditory

Verbal Learning Test, Verbal Fluency Test, and Stroop Test With
Brazilian Children

Rosinda Martins Oliveira Daniel C. Mograbi

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro
and King’s College London
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

Iasmin Andrade Gabrig and Helenice Charchat-Fichman

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro

This work presents normative data for Brazilian children on the Rey Auditory Verbal
Learning Test (RAVLT), Verbal Fluency Test (VFT), and Stroop test (ST). The effects
of age were evaluated. The patterns of results were compared with the literature, and
validity was assessed using cluster analysis. The participants included 390 healthy
subjects, 7–14 years old. Mixed-model analyses of variance were performed, with age
as the between-subjects factor and test phase, trial, and stimulus type as the within-
subjects factors. A cluster analysis explored the classification of the cognitive variables.
Older children performed better than younger children, with differences in learning
scores on the VFT and RALVT between children who were 7– 8 and 11–12 years old
and differences in Stroop times between children who were 9 –10 and 11–12 years old.
Letter fluency was easier than semantic fluency, with no interaction between type of fluency
and age. Stroop times and errors increased as interference increased and decreased as age
increased. Age differences in total learning, proactive interference, and forgetting were
observed for the RAVLT. The cluster analysis revealed 2 groups: ST variables (attention)
and RAVLT and VFT variables (memory). Some differences in terms of absolute
scores were found compared with other Brazilian studies, but the results showed
internal consistency and a pattern of results similar to the published data. The
dissociation between the memory and attention cognitive domains and the pattern
of subgroups in the cluster analysis were consistent with the cognitive neuropsy-
chology literature, providing further evidence of the validity of the paradigms.

Keywords: Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, Stroop test, Verbal Fluency Test,
cognitive development, child

Normative studies with different populations
are important because cultural and demographic
variables can impact cognitive function and its
development and measurement (Ardila, 2007).
Verbal measures are known to be affected by
differences between languages, making it diffi-
cult to use norms that were obtained in a dif-
ferent language (Kempler, Teng, Dick, Taussig,
& Davis, 1998; Tallberg, Carlsson, & Lieber-
man, 2011). Some cognitive functions are also
subjected to the effects of sociodemographic
variables during development, such as socio-

Rosinda Martins Oliveira, Instituto de Psicologia,
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro; Daniel C.
Mograbi, Departamento de Psicologia, Pontifícia Uni-
versidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, and Institute of
Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King’s Col-
lege London; Iasmin Andrade Gabrig and Helenice
Charchat-Fichman, Departamento de Psicologia, Pon-
tifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro.
This study was supported by the Fundação Carlos Chagas
Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Grant
E-26/103.193/2012) and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvi-
mento Científico e Tecnológico (Grant 155700/2013–8).
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Rosinda Martins Oliveira, Psychology Department, Universi-
dade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Avenue Pasteur, 250, Rio de
Janeiro RJ 22290-902, Brazil. E-mail: rosindaoli@yahoo.com.br

54
 VERBAL LEARNING AND FLUENCY WITH BRAZILIAN CHILDREN
economic status and the level of parental edu-
cation. These effects have been found particu-
larly for measures of language and executive
function (Hurks et al., 2006; Sbicigo, Abaid,
Dell’Aglio, & Salles, 2013). Cultural differ-
ences also modulate various aspects of cogni-
tive development and the response to cognitive
testing (Pedraza & Mungas, 2008).
The number of normative studies of neuro-
psychological measures with Brazilian samples
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has been growing in recent years (Pawlowski,
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Trentini, & Bandeira, 2007), but few studies
have evaluated children. Such a situation has a
tremendous impact on the growing field of clin-
ical neuropsychology, especially when one con-
siders the heterogeneity of the Brazilian popu-
lation with regard to culture and education.
Considering the continental dimension of Bra-
zil, which leads to high cultural variation,
knowing more about the response of different
samples of this population might contribute to
the growing field of cross-cultural neuropsy-
chology.
The present study investigated evidence of
the validity of three paradigms that are com-
monly used for neuropsychological assessment
(the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test
[RAVLT], Verbal Fluency Test [VFT], and
Stroop Test [ST]) and sought to generate norms
for Brazilian children. The three paradigms are
well known for their psychometric properties
and frequently employed for neuropsychologi-
cal assessment.
Verbal Fluency Test
Semantic and letter fluency is commonly
used in clinical and research settings. In the
former, the subject produces as many words as
possible within a limited time interval and
within a given semantic category. In the latter,
the words to be produced must begin with a
given letter (Strauss, Sherman, & Spreen,
2006).
Similar to adults, studies with children have
reported a greater number of words that are
produced in semantic fluency tasks than in letter
fluency tasks (Hurks et al., 2006; Kavé, Knafo,
& Gilboa, 2010; Koren, Kofman, & Berger,
2005; Malek, Hekmati, Amiri, Pirzadeh, &
Gholizadeh, 2013; Nieto, Galtier, Barroso, &
Espinosa, 2008; Riva, Nichelli, & Devoti, 2000;
Sauzéon, Lestage, Raboutet, N=Kaoua, & Clav-
55
erie, 2004; Tallberg et al., 2011). Such findings
can be explained in terms of a greater depen-
dency of letter fluency on executive function,
whereas semantic fluency appears to be more
related to lexical–semantic networks that com-
prise semantic memory, although both systems
are required for each of the tasks (Troyer &
Moscovich, 2006). Developmental data on stra-
tegic scores for these paradigms corroborate this
hypothesis (Kavé, Kigel, & Kochva, 2008; Riva
et al., 2000; Sauzéon et al., 2004).
These tasks are related to frontal and tempo-
ral lobe activation (Troyer & Moscovich, 2006),
which are sensitive to conditions that affect the
frontal lobes during childhood, including atten-
tion-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (Gonçalves et
al., 2013; Marzocchi et al., 2008; Puentes-Rozo,
Barceló-Martínez, & Pineda, 2008), autism (Be-
geer et al., 2014; Czermainski, Bosa, & de
Salles, 2014), Tourette’s syndrome (Eddy,
Rickards, & Cavanna, 2012; Verté, Geurts, Ro-
eyers, Oosterlaan, & Sergeant, 2005), and dys-
lexia (Brosnan et al., 2002; de Lima, Azoni, &
Ciasca, 2011).
The VFT has good psychometric properties
(Strauss et al., 2006). Normative studies with
children from different countries and with dif-
ferent languages have reported a highly consis-
tent pattern of results (Ardila, Rosselli, Matute,
& Guajardo, 2005; Kavé, Kukulansky-Segal, et
al., 2010; Koren et al., 2005; Lee, Yuen, &
Chan, 2002; Malek et al., 2013; Martins, Vieira,
Loureiro, & Santos, 2007; Nieto et al., 2008;
Riva et al., 2000; Sauzéon et al., 2004; Tallberg
et al., 2011; Van der Elst, Hurks, Wassenberg,
Meijs, & Jolles, 2011).
Some authors claim that the development of
semantic fluency is more pronounced in early
childhood, becoming stable at 10 to 12 years of
age, whereas letter fluency continues to change in
later childhood and adolescence (Riva et al., 2000;
Sauzéon et al., 2004) when the development of the
central executive and maturation of the frontal
lobes peak (Bjorklund & Douglas, 1997). While
this claim makes theoretical sense, evidence for it
has not been found in other studies that compared
letter and semantic fluency (Kavé et al., 2008;
Tallberg et al., 2011).
Stroop Test
The Stroop paradigm evaluates selective at-
tention and cognitive flexibility by measuring
 56 OLIVEIRA, MOGRABI, GABRIG, AND CHARCHAT-FICHMAN
shifting ability with regard to suppressing a
usual response in favor of an unusual response
(Strauss et al., 2006). Performance on the ST is
sensitive to dysfunction of the frontal lobes,
including neuropsychiatric disturbances (e.g.,
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, anxiety,
autism, and depression; Assef, Capovilla, & Ca-
povilla, 2007; Ergür et al., 2012; Homack &
Riccio, 2004; Lansbergen, Kenemans, & van
Engeland, 2007; Okuniewska, Maryniak, &
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Healthy Groups of Children, 2012).
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The ST has several variations, but the classic
word color Stroop task includes trials with min-
imal and maximal interference. In minimal in-
terference trials, the subject has to name colors
of dots or read words. In maximal interference
trials, color names are printed in an incongruent
color, and the subject needs to name the color in
which the color names are printed (Strauss et
al., 2006).
Typically, for the classic color Stroop task,
some minimal interference is present at the be-
ginning of reading acquisition, and it increases
in tandem with reading level. Afterward, from
approximately 8 years of age and during ado-
lescence/early adulthood, interference decreases
and increases again after 60 years of age (Fac-
cioli, Peru, Rubini, & Tassinari, 2008; Ma-
cLeod, 1991). However, changes in the effects
of interference are not always observed during
childhood and adolescence, depending on the
age groups that are studied and the specific task
that is used. For word Stroop tasks, differences
are only evident when 7- to 8-year-olds are
compared with older children and adolescents.
If the sample only includes children who are
older than 9 years of age, then the age effect is
no longer significant (Comalli, Wapner, & Wer-
ner, 1962; Merrill, Sperber, & McCauley, 1981;
Visser, Das-Smaal, & Kwakman, 1996; Wright
& Wanley, 2003).
Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test
In its different versions, the RAVLT is the
most widely used learning and memory assess-
ment (Gavett & Horwitz, 2012; Lehmann,
Marks, & Hanstock, 2013; Rahimi-Golkhandan,
Maruff, Darby, & Wilson, 2012). It has also
been shown to be extremely robust in terms of
its psychometric qualities (de Paula et al., 2012;
Schmidt, 1996) and the internal consistency of
its results, despite variations in the procedure
(Oliveira & Charchat-Fichman, 2008; Poreh,
Sultan, & Levin, 2012).
Memory deficits that are revealed by the
RAVLT have been detected in many disorders
(Badcock, Dragović, Dawson, & Jones, 2011;
de Paula & Malloy-Diniz, 2013; Martín et al.,
2013; Ricci, Graef, Blundo, & Miller, 2012),
including during childhood (Lajiness-O’Neill,
Erdodi, & Bigler, 2010; Pollak, Kahana-Vax, &
Hoofien, 2007; Zajac-Spychala et al., 2013).
Normative studies of the RAVLT with chil-
dren and adolescents have found that age affects
the results. However, this effect does not appear
to be linear. Vakil, Blachstein, and Sheinman
(1998) found that this effect appears mainly
between 8 and 10 years of age and is less
pronounced between 11 and 17 years of age for
several RAVLT scores (e.g., learning trials, to-
tal learning, retroactive interference, and re-
trieval efficiency). These differential effects of
age have been explained in terms of the use of
strategies in older children and were confirmed
in a recent study (Vakil, Greenstein, & Blach-
stein, 2010). Forrester and Geffen (1991) found
effects of age on the same measures, with the
exception of retroactive interference. However,
the age differences were only statistically sig-
nificant when comparing the 7- to 8-year-old
group with older children, which was an earlier
age effect compared with the findings that were
reported by Vakil et al. (1998).
Normative Studies With
Brazilian Children
Despite extensive clinical and research appli-
cations and solid psychometric qualities of each
of the three paradigms, normative data for Bra-
zilian children are still limited. Verbal fluency
has only recently been used in studies of pedi-
atric clinical groups in Brazil (Abreu et al.,
2013; Barbosa, Miranda, Santos, & Bueno,
2009; Braga, Souza, Najjar, & Dellatolas, 2007;
Gonçalves et al., 2013; Patrick et al., 2005;
Silveira, Passos, dos Santos, & Chiapetta,
2009). Normative studies of the VFT have only
presented data on either semantic or letter flu-
ency and have been restricted in terms of age
spans (Charchat-Fichman, Oliveira, & da Silva,
2011; Dias, Menezes, & Seabra, 2013; Heleno
& Haase, 2006; Malloy-Diniz et al., 2007).
The Stroop paradigm has been employed to
assess attentional selectivity in different pathol-
 VERBAL LEARNING AND FLUENCY WITH BRAZILIAN CHILDREN
ogies (e.g., attention-deficit/hyperactivity disor-
der, dyslexia, traumatic head injury, and HIV;
Assef et al., 2007; de Lima et al., 2011; Haase,
Nicolau, Viana, & Pinto, 2014; Narvaez et al.,
2014). Normative studies have also presented
data from restricted age spans (Cabaco, Colás,
Hage, Abramides, & Loureiro, 2002; Charchat-
Fichman & Oliveira, 2009; Duncan, 2006).
Similarly, as elsewhere (Vakil et al., 2010), the
number of studies of the RAVLT with children
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is also very small, also covering a restricted age
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span (Brooking, Uehara, Charchat-Fichman, &
Landeira-Fernandez, 2012; Charchat-Fichman
& Oliveira, 2009; Martins et al., 2005).
Objective
The aims of the present study were (1) to
present normative data on the VFT, ST, and
RAVLT for a Brazilian sample of healthy chil-
dren, discriminating the impact of age, (2) to
compare the patterns of data that are described
in the literature, and (3) because the same chil-
dren were tested in the three paradigms, to
explore evidence of the validity of the tests
through a cluster analysis.
Method
Participants
The sample consisted of 7- to 14-year-old
children (n ⫽ 396; 7– 8 years old, n ⫽ 121;
9 –10 years old, n ⫽ 107; 11–12 years old, n ⫽
97; 13–14 years old, n ⫽ 71) who had no
history of neurological or neuropsychiatric dis-
turbances and were from families with monthly
incomes between one and five times the national
minimum wage (socioeconomic classes C, D,
and E) as ascertained by an interview with their
parents. The total sample had 53% girls and
47% boys, with no significant differences be-
tween age groups in terms of the gender distri-
bution, ␹2(3) ⫽ 1.09, p ⫽ .778.
The study was approved by the local research
ethics committee (16/2010; Ethics Committee
of the Department of Psychology of the Pontifí-
cia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro).
For all of the subjects, informed consent was
obtained from the parents prior to testing.
57
Procedures
All of the subjects completed the three para-
digms in a fixed order in two test sessions. The
first session included the RAVLT and Rey
Complex Figure (Copy and Delayed Recall).
The Rey Complex Figure—Copy was con-
ducted before the RAVLT, and the Rey Com-
plex Figure—Delayed Recall served as a dis-
tractor in the 20-min interval between the
delayed recall and recognition trials of the
RAVLT. The second session included the VFT
(F, A, M, animals, fruits, clothes) and ST (color,
words, interference), in this order.
Measures
The version of the RAVLT that was used in
the study had four learning trials, followed by
an interference trial, free-recall trial, delayed-
recall trial, and final-recognition trial (Oliveira
& Charchat-Fichman, 2008). The VFT included
letter fluency (F, A, and M) and semantic flu-
ency (animals, fruits, and clothes), which were
tested in 1-min trials (Charchat-Fichman et al.,
2011). The Victoria version of the ST was used
in the present study (Charchat-Fichman & Ol-
iveira, 2009).
Statistical Analysis
For each test, differences in performance
were explored using mixed-model analyses of
variance (ANOVAs), with age as the between-
subjects factor (four levels: 7– 8 years old, 9 –10
years old, 11–12 years old, and 13–14 years old)
and test phase, trial, and stimulus type as the
within-subjects factors (the number of levels
depended on the test). Post hoc t tests followed
significant interactions and main effects in the
ANOVAs. A linear trend analysis was also per-
formed to determine whether performance in
the paradigms followed a linear tendency.
A cluster analysis was conducted to explore
the classification of the different cognitive vari-
ables in the current sample. Clustering was per-
formed with between-groups linkage. The
squared Euclidian distance was used as a simi-
larity measure. Values were standardized with z
scores. To determine the stability of the results,
we randomly divided the sample into two
halves, and the cluster analysis was repeated for
each of them (Clatworthy, Buick, Hankins,
Weinman, & Horne, 2005).
 58 OLIVEIRA, MOGRABI, GABRIG, AND CHARCHAT-FICHMAN
Results
Letter and Semantic Fluency
The results of the letter fluency task are
shown in Table 1. Significant main effects of
letter, F(2, 774) ⫽ 9.29, p ⬍ .001, and age, F(3,
387) ⫽ 49.42, p ⬍ .001, were found. Planned
comparisons indicated that performance was
worse for the letter A compared with the other
letters (p ⬍ .001 in both cases), but no differ-
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ence was found between the two consonants
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(p ⫽ .948). With regard to age, 7- to 8-year-olds
(p ⬍ .001 in both cases) and 9- to 10-year-olds
(p ⫽ .011 and p ⬍ .001) performed worse than
the older children, but no significant difference
was found between 11- to 12-year-olds and 13-
to 14-year-olds (p ⫽ .112). A linear trend was
observed for age (p ⬍ .001). No significant age
Group ⫻ Letter interaction was observed, F(6,
774) ⫽ .75, p ⫽ .606.
Scores on the semantic fluency tasks are
shown in Table 2. Significant main effects of
semantic category, F(2, 770) ⫽ 197.19, p ⬍
.001, and age, F(3, 385) ⫽ 56.17, p ⬍ .001,
were found. Planned comparisons indicated dif-
ferences between all categories (p ⬍ .001 in all
cases), with the best performance for animals
and worst performance for fruits. With regard to
age, 7- to 8-year-olds and 9- to 10-year-olds
(p ⬍ .001 in all cases) performed worse than the
older children, but no difference was found be-
tween 11- to 12-year-olds and 13- to 14-year-
olds (p ⫽ .070). A linear trend was observed for
age (p ⬍ .001). No significant age Group ⫻
Category interaction was observed, F(6, 770) ⫽
1.42, p ⫽ .202.
Stroop Test
Mean completion times and the number of
errors on the ST are shown in Table 3. For time,
a significant Age Group ⫻ Test Phase interac-
Table 1
Phonemic Fluency Performance by Age Group
and Letter
Age F mean (SD) A mean (SD) M mean (SD)
7–8 years 5.3 (2.5) 5.2 (2.2) 5.4 (2.7)
9–10 years 7.7 (2.7) 7.3 (2.7) 7.7 (2.8)
11–12 years 8.7 (3.3) 8.0 (2.3) 8.5 (2.9)
13–14 years 9.3 (3.5) 8.4 (3.3) 9.3 (3.4)
Table 2
Semantic Fluency Performance by Age Group
and Category
Animals Fruits Clothes
Age mean (SD) mean (SD) mean (SD)
7–8 years 10.5 (3.6) 7.8 (2.6) 8.0 (3.5)
9–10 years 12.9 (3.7) 9.4 (2.5) 10.1 (3.2)
11–12 years 14.8 (4.3) 10.9 (2.5) 11.6 (3.3)
13–14 years 15.5 (3.5) 11.5 (3.0) 12.6 (4.1)
tion was observed, F(6, 762) ⫽ 13.33, p ⬍ .001.
No differences were found between 11- to 12-
year-olds and 13- to 14-year-olds in the color-
naming phase, but these groups presented dif-
ferences in the other phases. A significant main
effect of test phase was found, F(2, 762) ⫽
799.18, p ⬍ .001, with the children spending
longer in the interference phase compared with
the other phases (p ⬍ .001) and spending longer
in the word-naming phase compared with the
color-naming phase (p ⬍ .001). A significant
effect of age was also observed, F(3, 381) ⫽
82.77, p ⬍ .001, in which the older children
outperformed the younger children (i.e., they
performed the tasks in less time; p ⬍ .001 in all
cases). A linear trend was observed for age (p ⬍
.001).
The analysis of the number of errors indi-
cated a significant Age Group ⫻ Test Phase
interaction, F(6, 762) ⫽ 2.60, p ⫽ .017, in
which the 7- to 8-year-olds performed worse
than all of the other age groups in the interfer-
ence phase only (p ⫽ .027, p ⫽ .020, and p ⫽
.002, respectively). A significant main effect of
test phase was found, F(2, 762) ⫽ 46.30, p ⬍
.001, in which more errors were observed in the
interference phase compared with the color-
naming phase (p ⬍ .001). A significant effect of
age was also found, F(3, 381) ⫽ 4.00, p ⫽ .008,
with 7- to 8-year-olds committing more errors
than 11- to 12-year-olds (p ⫽ .018) and 13- to
14-year-olds (p ⫽ .001). A linear trend was
observed for age (p ⫽ .001).
Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test
Scores in each trial are shown in Table 4. A
mixed-design ANOVA of scores from Trials A1
to A4 revealed no significant interaction, F(3,
390) ⫽ 2.03, p ⫽ .417, but significant main
effects of age, F(3, 390) ⫽ 40.59, p ⬍ .001, and
trial, F(1, 390) ⫽ 1313.79, p ⬍ .001. Differ-
 VERBAL LEARNING AND FLUENCY WITH BRAZILIAN CHILDREN 59

Table 3
Stroop Performance by Age Group and Test Phase
Color Word Interference
Time Errors Time Errors Time Errors
Age mean (SD) mean (SD) mean (SD) mean (SD) mean (SD) mean (SD)
7–8 years 24.4 (7.6) .1 (.6) 32.9 (9.2) .2 (.5) 45.9 (14.6) 1.3 (2.2)
9–10 years 20.2 (5.3) .2 (1.2) 25.9 (6.9) .2 (.9) 37.3 (9.5) .7 (1.6)
11–12 years 17.2 (4.1) .1 (.3) 21.5 (4.6) .1 (.4) 32.5 (8.3) .7 (1.6)
13–14 years 15.0 (3.3) .1 (.4) 17.9 (4.4) .1 (.2) 26.2 (7.3) .4 (1.0)
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ences were found between all age groups (p ⬍
.001), except for the comparison between the
11- to 12-year-olds and the 13- to 14-year-olds
(p ⫽ .433). A linear trend was observed for age
(p ⬍ .001). Differences between all trials were
observed, with increased recall with repetition
of the material (all ps ⬍ .001).
Composite scores on the RAVLT are shown
in Table 5. One-way ANOVAs indicated signif-
icant age differences in total learning, F(3,
393) ⫽ 40.59, p ⬍ .001, proactive interference
(B1/A1), F(3, 393) ⫽ 2.72, p ⫽ .044, and
forgetting (A6/A5), F(3, 393) ⫽ 3.01, p ⫽ .030.
In contrast, no age differences were found in
retroactive interference (A5/A4), F(3, 393) ⫽
.84, p ⫽ .472, retrieval efficiency (A6/
recognition ratio for list A), F(3, 393) ⫽ 1.11,
p ⫽ .347, or the rate of learning (A4-A1), F(3,
393) ⫽ 1.13, p ⫽ .338.
Cluster Analysis
(4) ST2, ST3, ST1 (inhibitory control). At an
intermediate level, all learning and retrieval
variables were merged. At this level, A1 merged
with the retrieval group. At a slightly higher
level, B1 (working memory) and the VFT were
grouped together with other memory variables.
The results of the cluster analysis were consis-
tent after repeating the analysis with the sample
randomly divided in half, suggesting good con-
sistency of the findings.
Discussion
Main effects of age were found in all of the
paradigms, with linear trends reinforcing these
findings. The general pattern of results for each
paradigm was similar to previous studies. Be-
low, we discuss the findings in relation to the
existing literature for each paradigm.
Verbal Fluency Test

The analysis of both the agglomeration ma-
trix and dendrogram (see Figure 1) suggested
the existence of two dissociated clusters, one
with scores on the ST and another with all
memory variables (RAVLT and VFT vari-
ables), that were merged at a higher, less similar
level. Further inspection of the dendrogram re-
vealed four homogeneous groups at a lower
level: (1) A2, A3, A1-A4 (learning), (2) A5, A6
(retrieval), (3) VFT phonetic and semantic, and
The number of words that were produced was
greater in the semantic task than in the letter
task. This classic pattern of results for both
adults and children can be explained in terms of
increased executive demand for letter fluency
compared with semantic fluency (Koren et al.,
2005; Riva et al., 2000; Sauzéon et al., 2004).
A significant difference was found between
the three semantic tasks (e.g., animal naming
was easier than clothes naming, which in turn,

Table 4
Correct Word Recall Means (SDs) by Age Group and Trial
Age A1 A2 A3 A4 B1 A5 A6 Recall A Recall B
7–8 years 5.1 (1.5) 6.9 (2.1) 8.0 (2.3) 8.8 (2.1) 4.5 (1.3) 6.9 (2.2) 7.3 (2.2) 10.1 (2.3) 6.6 (2.6)
9–10 years 6.0 (1.4) 7.9 (1.8) 9.0 (1.4) 9.4 (1.7) 5.0 (1.3) 8.0 (1.9) 8.0 (2.0) 10.9 (1.4) 7.3 (2.6)
11–12 years 6.5 (1.2) 8.5 (2.0) 9.9 (1.3) 10.2 (1.5) 5.6 (1.5) 8.8 (1.8) 8.9 (1.8) 11.2 (1.2) 7.7 (2.4)
13–14 years 6.5 (1.4) 8.6 (1.4) 9.9 (1.3) 10.4 (1.3) 5.4 (1.4) 9.1 (1.7) 9.2 (1.6) 11.2 (.9) 7.2 (2.6)
 60 OLIVEIRA, MOGRABI, GABRIG, AND CHARCHAT-FICHMAN

Table 5
Means (SDs) of Composite RAVLT Scores by Age Group
Age 冱A1A4a A4-A1 A5/A4 B1/A1b A6/A5b A6/recall A B1/recall B
7–8 years 28.8 (6.3) 3.7 (2.1) .8 (.4) 1.0 (.6) 1.1 (.3) .7 (.5) .8 (.5)
9–10 years 32.3 (4.3) 3.4 (2.2) .9 (1.0) .9 (.3) 1.0 (.2) .7 (.2) .8 (.3)
11–12 years 35.1 (4.4) 3.7 (1.7) .9 (.1) .9 (.2) 1.0 (.2) .8 (.2) .8 (.3)
13–14 years 35.6 (4.1) 3.9 (1.6) .9 (.1) .9 (.2) 1.0 (.1) .8 (.1) .9 (.4)
Note. RAVLT ⫽ Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test.
a
Post hoc tests: 7– 8 years old ⬍9 –10 years old ⬍11–12 years old ⫽ 13–14 years old. b
Post
hoc tests: 7– 8 years old ⬍9 –10 years old ⫽ 11–12 years old ⫽ 13–14 years old.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

was easier than fruit naming). In the letter flu-
ency task, better performance was observed for
words that began with consonants (F and M)
than for words that began with the vowel A.
Other studies have reported no differences be-
tween various letter sets that were selected ac-
cording to the number of words in the language
that begin with that particular letter (Strauss et
al., 2006). However, in some studies (Anderson,
Lajoie, & Bell, 1995) but not others (Nieto et
al., 2008), the inspection of means and standard
deviations per letter showed a clear trend in the
same direction as the one observed herein. Dif-
ferences between semantic categories have been
found and may be explained in terms of cate-
gory familiarity (Koren et al., 2005).

Figure 1. Dendogram with clustering of cognitive test variables.

 VERBAL LEARNING AND FLUENCY WITH BRAZILIAN CHILDREN
An effect of age was found in all of the
semantic and letter fluency tasks. The number
of words that were produced gradually in-
creased from the 7- to 8-year-olds to the 11-
to 12-year-olds and remained stable thereaf-
ter. Age effects within the same age span have
been observed in other Brazilian studies
(Brooking et al., 2012; Dias et al., 2013) for
letter (Malloy-Diniz et al., 2007) and seman-
tic fluency. This has also been observed in
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
other countries (Kavé et al., 2008; Lee et al.,
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
2002; Martins et al., 2007; Prigatano, Gray, &
Lomay, 2008; Tallberg et al., 2011). The in-
teraction between age and type of fluency was
not significant, which is consistent with some
studies (Kavé et al., 2008; Tallberg et al.,
2011), whereas other studies indeed reported
such an interaction (Riva et al., 2000;
Sauzéon et al., 2004).
Although we cannot compare the absolute
values that were obtained herein with previ-
ous studies because of variations in language
(e.g., word size and time of articulation) and
methods (e.g., correction criteria and sample
selection criteria), the findings are within the
range that has been reported for different lan-
guages and countries. For letter fluency, the
7- to 8-year-olds produced four to six words,
and the 13- to 14-year-olds produced nine to
eleven words (Dias et al., 2013; Kavé, Kuku-
lansky-Segal, et al., 2010; Sauzéon et al.,
2004). For the animal category, the 7- to
8-year-olds produced 11 to 13 words, and the
13- to 14-year-olds produced 18 to 22 words
(Kavé et al., 2008; Hurks et al., 2006; Malloy-
Diniz et al., 2007).
Stroop Task
The classic pattern of performance for Stroop
tasks with children (Bub, Masson, & Lalonde,
2006; Comalli et al., 1962; Okuniewska et al.,
2012) and adults (MacLeod & MacDonald,
2000; Strauss et al., 2006) was found in the
present study. The naming times and number of
errors on the ST increased from the Color phase
to the Word phase and finally to the Interference
phase. This can be explained in terms of the
difficulty inhibiting a prepotent overlearned re-
sponse in favor of a novel response (MacLeod
& MacDonald, 2000; Strauss et al., 2006). As
typically found, older children were faster in the
three conditions (Comalli et al., 1962; Gut-
61
tentag & Haith, 1978; Wright & Wanley, 2003),
which is consistent with the overall increase in
information processing speed that occurs during
normal human development.
The time to complete the three phases tends
to converge as children get older (Comalli et al.,
1962; Guttentag & Haith, 1978; Wright & Wan-
ley, 2003). In the present study, a significant age
effect on the number of errors was found exclu-
sively for the interference phase, with younger
participants making more errors when interfer-
ence was maximized. In the ST, the magnitude
of interference is reflected by both longer times
and a greater number of errors in the incongru-
ent condition compared with neutral and mini-
mal interference conditions (Strauss et al.,
2006). These findings are consistent with the
developmental trajectory of the response to in-
terference during life. Interference effects are
weaker in adults than in children but become
stronger again in older adults (Comalli et al.,
1962; Wright & Wanley, 2003). These results
are in agreement with other studies that found
changes in interference effects during childhood
and adolescence (Comalli et al., 1962; Merrill et
al., 1981; Visser et al., 1996; Wright & Wanley,
2003).
The magnitude of times for the three phases
of the ST in the present study and the pattern of
results are consistent with two previous studies
with Brazilian children (Charchat-Fichman &
Oliveira, 2009; Duncan, 2006). The results are
also consistent with those of Malek et al.
(2013), who evaluated Persian children and ad-
olescents. To the best of our knowledge, these
are the only normative studies that used the
Victoria version of the ST with children.
Duncan (2006) found that children from pub-
lic schools were slower than children from pri-
vate schools with regard to performance on the
ST, and the results in the present study were
similar. Although the sample in the present
study was entirely from private schools, the
schools where recruitment occurred have a pop-
ulation of children that is similar to that of
public schools (i.e., low income and low family
education).
Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test
For this Brazilian sample, the means for sim-
ple and composite scores were very similar to
those from four normative studies with German
 62 OLIVEIRA, MOGRABI, GABRIG, AND CHARCHAT-FICHMAN
(van den Burg & Kingma, 1999), Australian
(Forrester & Geffen, 1991), and Israeli (Vakil et
al., 1998, 2010) subjects. Only a tendency to-
ward slightly lower scores was found in A1 to
A4 for the Brazilian children compared with the
others. This might be an effect of the fewer
number of words in the shortened version of the
paradigm that was used in the present study.
Because fewer nodes (words) were activated in
memory (when listening to the list), the number
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of words that were available to recall was lower
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
and so was the chance of recalling. Another
difference was that Total Learning was lower in
this study than in the other studies.
The pattern of results that was found in the
present study was also consistent with the im-
mense literature on this paradigm with healthy
adults and children. The learning of List A was
observed along the first four trials, with a small
reduction of words that were recalled from List
A after List B was introduced. Additionally,
after the 20-min delay, no significant loss of
information from List A was observed, and the
recognition score was higher than the recall
score for List A. Finally, the recognition of List
A was better than the recognition of List B.
An age effect on Total Learning was found,
with scores improving with age (i.e., from 7– 8
to 11–12 years old). Vakil et al. (2010) reported
similar results with Israeli children, with no
changes between 11 and 17 years of age. The
change in the rate of learning at this time of life
might at least partially reflect an effect of the
progressively more strategic encoding of new
information (Shallice et al., 1994; Tulving,
Markowitsch, Craik, Habib, & Houle, 1996).
Moreover, the increase in vocabulary as chil-
dren get older may facilitate encoding and re-
calling the lists. The memory nodes for the
words would thus already be stored in long-term
memory, and encoding would become simply a
matter of increasing activation levels rather than
forming new memory nodes (Shallice et al.,
1994).
Older children (11–12 and 13–14 years old)
presented better retrieval efficiency than
younger children (7– 8 and 9 –10 years old). A
similar effect was reported by Forrester and
Geffen (1991) and Vakil et al. (2010), who
found that the age of transition was earlier in
these studies (7– 8 years old in the Australian
sample and 8 years old in the Israeli sample)
than in studies with Brazilian children.
In the present study, a statistically significant
effect of age on proactive interference was also
found. One explanation for this finding is that
there was virtually no difference between the
number of words recalled for the first presenta-
tion of List A and the number of words recalled
from List B for 7- to 8-year-olds, but differ-
ences were observed in the older age groups. A
similar pattern of results was found by Forrester
and Geffen (1991). Vakil et al. (2010) did not
find an age effect for proactive interference,
calculated as the difference between the two
scores, but their youngest group was 8 years
old. The capacity of short-term storage may be
very small for 7-year-old participants, such that
the effect of interference may not be as promi-
nent, thus suggesting a floor effect.
No effect of age on retroactive interference
was found for Brazilian children, in contrast to
the findings of Forrester and Geffen (1991).
Vakil et al. (2010) found an age effect for this
variable in younger and older adults but not in
children.
In summary, the results that were obtained
with this Brazilian sample showed internal con-
sistency and were similar to the data from two
normative studies with children that have been
published to date (Forrester & Geffen, 1991;
Vakil et al., 1998, 2010; van den Burg &
Kingma, 1999). The pattern of simple and com-
posite scores was similar to the classic pattern
that is found in the vast number of studies with
adults. Altogether, these results corroborate the
validity of these paradigms, despite the small
variations that are present in the different ver-
sions.
Construct Validity Based on
Cluster Analysis
The cluster analysis revealed two principal
and dissociated variable groups: (1) ST vari-
ables (“attention group”) and (2) all RAVLT
and VFT variables (“memory group”). The dis-
sociation between these cognitive domains is
consistent with the cognitive neuropsychology
literature.
The clustering of Stroop results—and inside
that cluster, the closer relationship between the
two interference phases—suggests that they are
tapping related, although not identical, abilities
(Kane & Engle, 2003; Strauss et al., 2006). In
the memory cluster, the RAVLT subgroup
 VERBAL LEARNING AND FLUENCY WITH BRAZILIAN CHILDREN
showed four levels: (1) one group formed by
A2, A3, ⌺A1A4 (“learning”), (2) one group
formed by A4, A5, and A6 (“long-term stor-
age”), (3) one group formed only by A1 (“short-
term storage”), and (4) one group that merged at
a higher level with B1 (“working memory”).
Although this is different from the two-factor
structure that was observed by Vakil and Blach-
stein (1993) in a set of adult data, as Strauss et
al. (2006) pointed out, the number of factors in
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this case depends on the particular combination
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
of scores that are included in the analysis. Ad-
ditionally, the grouping that was observed
herein makes theoretical sense. Inhibitory atten-
tional control that is measured by Stroop vari-
ables can be dissociated from memory vari-
ables, including learning, long-term memory,
short-term memory, semantic memory, and
working memory. The memory group is heter-
ogeneous and fractionated and includes differ-
ent domains, as described in the classic litera-
ture on memory systems (Squire, 1986).
Final Considerations
In summary, main effects of age, with linear
trends, were found in all of the paradigms, in-
dicating a gradual increase in cognitive ability
that accompanies brain development during in-
fancy. The general pattern of results for each
paradigm was similar to findings in the Brazil-
ian and international literature. Some differ-
ences were found when numerically comparing
the results with other Brazilian studies, which
may be related to the sociodemographic profile
of the sample or specificity of the scoring cri-
teria. A consistent relationship was observed
between memory variables (learning, recall,
recognition, and verbal fluency) that in turn
could be dissociated from selective attentional
and speed processing measures (ST), which is
consistent with cognitive neuropsychology the-
ories. Better knowledge of the neuropsycholog-
ical profiles of children with typical cognitive
development is crucial to identify clinical pop-
ulations, develop individual and educational in-
terventions, and evaluate their effects. Future
studies should be conducted to investigate the
use of these paradigms in clinical samples, in-
cluding children with learning disabilities, at-
tention deficits, autism, and other neuropsychi-
atric disorders. Finally, it is important to study
the influence of the sociodemographic and cul-
63
tural background of parents on cognitive devel-
opment.
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Received June 17, 2015
Revision received January 28, 2016
Accepted January 29, 2016 䡲