Controlled Oral Word Association Test
{{Short description|Verbal fluency test}}
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| purpose =verbal fluency test
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| synonyms = COWAT
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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.{{cite book|author1=Patricia Espe-Pfeifer|author2=Jana Wachsler-Felder|title=Neuropsychological Interpretation of Objective Psychological Tests|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7O66Q2-Oa9gC&pg=PA160|date=30 April 2000|publisher=Springer|isbn=978-0-306-46224-5|pages=160}}
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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".{{cite book|author=Muriel Deutsch Lezak|title=Neuropsychological Assessment|url=https://archive.org/details/neuropsychologic0000leza|url-access=registration|date=2 March 1995|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-509031-4|pages=[https://archive.org/details/neuropsychologic0000leza/page/545 545]}}
Procedure
The participant is usually asked to name words beginning with a letter, excluding proper nouns, 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.{{cite book|author1=Margaret Semrud-Clikeman|author2=Phyllis Anne Teeter Ellison|title=Child Neuropsychology: Assessment and Interventions for Neurodevelopmental Disorders, 2nd Edition|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NBGSF9Jyg6AC&pg=PA171|date=15 June 2009|publisher=Springer|isbn=978-0-387-88963-4|pages=171}} 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.