24/09/2024
Verbal fluency or oral fluency has more of a right hemisphere involvement in typically developing children.
This study explores the brain structures associated with phonemic (sound-based) and semantic (meaning-based) verbal fluency in typically-developing children. Conducted on children aged 7-13, the study highlights the role of certain brain regions, particularly the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) and arcuate fasciculus (AF), in verbal fluency. The research found that better performance in both types of fluency is linked to higher fractional anisotropy (FA)—a measure of white matter integrity—in the right hemisphere of these tracts.
Interestingly, for phonemic fluency, there was a modest association with lower FA in the left SLF/AF, suggesting that children's reliance on these brain regions may differ from what is typically seen in adults, where the left hemisphere is usually dominant in language processing. The findings point toward a more significant role of the right hemisphere in verbal fluency during childhood, indicating a different pattern of brain development related to language skills in children compared to adults.
This study emphasizes how language and executive function networks in the right hemisphere might be critical for developing fluency in young children.
For further reading the journal Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience is great.
