Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT)

The COWAT scores of the participants were evaluated using the Korean version of the COWAT²⁹ (Benton developed the original version of the test in 1968).³⁰ The measure involves semantic (category) and phonemic (letter) word fluency tests. In the semantic (animal) word fluency test, the participants were required to generate names of as many animals as possible in 60 s. Meanwhile, in the phonemic (letter) word fluency test, the participants were asked to list as many words as possible that begin with a given letter; for example, the letter “ㄱ.” Three 1-min trials, each for a different letter (eg, ㄱ, ㅇ, ㅅ), were administered. The score for each letter was the total number of admissible words for that letter.