What Drives Task Performance in Fluency Tasks in People Who Had COVID-19?

EasyChair Preprint 6501

Abstract

Introduction
People who had COVID-19 may have difficulties with language tasks, including fluency tasks. We performed a study to understand (1) whether people who had COVID-19 are more impaired in animal or letter fluency relative to a normative sample; and to assess (2) whether their performance can be explained with demographic factors, common COVID-19 symptoms, and word properties.

Methods
Eighty-four Spanish-speaking people who had COVID-19 responded to an animal and a letter fluency task, 10-35 days after hospital discharge or self-quarantining. Demographic factors, common COVID-19 symptoms, and word properties for each correct word were obtained. Two normative samples were used.

Results
People who had COVID-19 were not more impaired in any of the fluency tasks relative to the normative sample. Age of Acquisition and Frequency were most important to predict correct words in animal fluency; and concreteness and depression scores to predict the total word count in letter fluency.

Conclusion
Word properties described in studies of fluency tasks and other tasks were relevant to explain animal fluency. Concreteness and depression relevance to letter fluency were not expected and may be specific to people who had COVID-19. The results await replication.

Keyphrases: COVID-19, animal, category, fluency, letter, word properties

@booklet{EasyChair:6501,
  author    = {Adrià Rofes and Marta Almeria and Roel Jonkers and Joan Deus and Jerzy Krupinski},
  title     = {What Drives Task Performance in Fluency Tasks in People Who Had COVID-19?},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 6501},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}