What is a percentile? → Your fluency score was compared to our existing database. In our database, we ranked all the scores from lowest to highest for each category. Your percentile score is the percentage of scores in our database that were lower than yours. For example, if you scored in the 70th percentile, that means you produced more words than 70% of our sample. Check out the About page to learn more about where our sample came from.
Why were some of my words excluded? → Each entry was checked against our existing database, which serves as a "dictionary." You most likely entered in a word that was not found in our database.
I got a low fluency score. Is that bad? → Not necessarily! There is a large degree of variation in fluency performance, and different strategies may be more beneficial for different people. In addition, our sample, while large, is not representative of the global population. See our About page to learn more about the characteristics of our sample.
I produced a lot of uncommon words. What does that mean? → Some words were produced very often by our sample because they are more common in everyday speech (e.g., dog), while others are more rare (e.g., aadvark). Producing more uncommon words likely means that you were drawing on unique connections in your own memory or just getting more creative!
If lists can be broken down into "clusters", how do you decide what's in a cluster? → Generally speaking, words are grouped into clusters based on how similar they are to one another. This can be based on either semantic or phonological similarity. We usually test a variety of specific methods to designate clusters – more information about the different methods can be found here.