Effects of Lead Poisoning on Cognitive Test Performance

Abstract

47 lead-poisoned children, treated and without encephalopathy, are compared with sibling controls on perceptual-verbal pattern comparisons of subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children to determine whether there has been brain damage. Both groups of children do not differ significantly from each other on comparisons of these patterns, and they appear to be similar to each other in WISC functioning. The conclusion is that lead-poisoning, treated, and without encephalopathy, does not result in detectable brain damage by means of these pattern analyses.