Final answer:
Frontal lobe damage can result in impairments in planning, working memory, personality, mood, and impulse control, all of which can affect performance on a word fluency task. The case of Phineas Gage is a historical example of how frontal lobe injury can lead to such changes.
Step-by-step explanation:
Frontal lobe damage can impact behavioral spontaneity, which may be observed during a word fluency task. The four features of frontal lobe damage in relation to this include:
- Impaired planning and judgment, resulting in difficulty generating a strategy to produce words during the task.
- Reduced working memory, affecting the ability to hold the task's rules in mind and retrieve words from memory.
- Altered personality and mood, which could translate to decreased motivation and effort on language tasks.
- Diminished impulse control, leading to inappropriate word choices or difficulty inhibiting irrelevant words.
These symptoms are illustrated by the case of Phineas Gage, whose frontal lobe damage resulted in profound personality changes, including problems with social behavior and impulse control. Similarly, a prefrontal lobectomy reportedly causes significant changes in these areas of behavior.