Perseveration in normal aging: A comparison of perseveration rates on design fluency and verbal generative tasks

Three generative tasks (design generation, animal naming, words starting with m) from the Cognitive Linguistic Quick Test were administered to 73 healthy individuals in four age groups (18-39, 40-59, 60-74, 75-88) and scored for perseveration and productivity. Perseveration rates for design generation were significantly higher, and increased linearly as a function of age. The number of individuals who perseverated at least once on design generation also increased linearly, with highest prevalence in the oldest group. No age effects were found for perseveration on the verbal naming tasks. Perseverations across tasks were independent of one another. The design generation task may require multiple simultaneous processing skills, placing more demand on compromised executive processing in the elderly.