Controlled Oral Word Association Test, abbreviated COWA or COWAT, is a
verbal fluency test that measures spontaneous production of words belonging to the same category or beginning with some designated letter.
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History
The test was first called the "Verbal Associative Fluency Test", and then was changed to the "Controlled Word Association Test".
Procedure
The participant is usually asked to name words beginning with a letter, excluding
proper nouns
A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', ''Sarah (given name), Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a Class (philo ...
, for one minute and this procedure is repeated three times. The most commons letters used are FAS because of their frequency in the English language.
The examiner must quickly write down the words provided by the participant on a piece of paper. The whole examination usually takes 5–10 minutes.
References
Neuropsychological tests
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