Perceived Stress and Verbal Fluency in Normal Adult Population: A Cross-Sectional Study from Eastern India

Background: Perceived stress has been implicated in executive functioning tasks such as verbal fluency. However, evidence from Indian populations examining the relationship between perceived stress and verbal fluency remains limited.

Aim: To assess perceived stress levels in a normal adult population and examine their association with verbal fluency performance as measured by the Controlled Word Association Test (COWAT).

Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 136 healthy adults from a tertiary care setting. Perceived stress was assessed using the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), while verbal fluency was evaluated using the Controlled Word Association Test (COWAT), including total score and mistake score. Sociodemographic variables were recorded. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS, employing independent-samples t-tests, exploratory analysis of variance, and Pearson’s and Spearman’s correlation coefficients.

Results: The mean PSS score of the sample was 21.28 ± 5.98. Female participants demonstrated significantly higher perceived stress (p = 0.008). Significant differences in PSS scores were also observed across religious groups (p = 0.003). No significant differences in perceived stress were found with respect to other demographic variables. Correlation analysis revealed no significant association between PSS scores and COWAT total scores (r = 0.013, p = 0.882) or COWAT mistake scores (r = 0.048, p = 0.579).

Conclusion: Perceived stress varies across certain sociodemographic variables such as sex and religion but shows no significant relationship with verbal fluency performance in a normal adult population. These findings suggest that everyday perceived stress may not directly impair phonemic verbal fluency among healthy individuals.