MMPI-WAIS relationships in organic and schizophrenic patients

Abstract

PROBLEMThis research investigated the relationships between a wide variety of pathological states (here defined as the MMPI clinical scales) and intellectual capacities (in this case, the subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale) in several groups of schizophrenic and brain-damaged patients. Many attempts have been made to determine whether relationships exist between intelligence and indicators of p ychopathology a-5). These papers have produced a mixture of positive and negatlve results.While the research reviewed has used normal and psychiatric patient groups, few brain-injured patients were included in any of the samples, and no attempt was made to study WAIS-MMPI relationships with exclusively organic samples. Moreover, the authors are unaware of any comparisons of WAIS-MMPI correlations across schizophrenic subgroups despite the presence of many papers (e.@ ( 6 ) ) that suggest that process schizophrenia may be organic in etiology.The present study considered once more the relationships between the MMPI and the WAIS in three organic groups and in four schizophrenic subtype samples.METHOD Subjects and Procedure. The WAIS and MMPI were administered to seven groups of patients, three brain-damaged and four schizophrenic, in conjunction with earlier studies (2* 8, 7). Files of the patients had been checked to rule out mixed diagnoses (e.g., patients whose files contain indications of both brain damage and schizophrenia), Three samples (one each of organics, process schizophrenics and reactive schizophrenics; all N = 40) were from the Veterans Administration Hospital a t Downey, Illinois. Four smaller samples (all N = 22) were obtained from the St. Cloud, Minnesota, Veterans Administration Hospital. These included recentadmission and old-admission schizophrenic and brain-damaged subgroups. Further details on the samples are available elsewhere(2* 3 -').Coefficients of correlations were computed between the 11 WAIS subtests and the MMPI L, F, K, Hs, D, HY, PD, MF, PA, PT, Sc and MA scales. Table 1 lists the hospital of origin, diagnosis, the mean and standard deviation for age and education for each sample, as well as the number of significant ( p < .05, two-tailed) WAIS-MMPI coefficients of correlation for each group. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONThere were 36 significant correlations in the schizophrenic groups and 77 among the organics. There were substantially more significant correlations in the samples than would be expected by chance at the .05 level (26.4 for the schizophrenic samples and 19.8 for the brain-injured samples).2 All but 3 of the 36 significant TS among the schizophrenics were negative, which indicates clearly the presence of some general inverse relationship between level of pathology and intellectual function. However, the individual MMPI-WAIS scale combinatlon rs did not cross-validate well enough from group to group to justify more specific conclusions about individual trait-deficit relationships.

An examination of differences between native and non-native psychiatric offenders on the MMPI.

“…Others concluded that this relative inability could raise select scores on the MMPI, particularly for natives (Pollack & Shore, 1980). Third, MMPI elevations have typically been found to be related to poor WAIS verbal subtest scores, notably those subtests comprising Cohen's (1957) "Verbal Comprehension" factor (Vocabulary, Information, Comprehension), among both psychiatric patients (Berg, Ingersoll, & Terry, 1985; Watson, Davis, & McDermott, 1976; Holland & Watson, 1980) and normals (Turner & Horn, 1976). Berg et al (1985) have provided an extended discussion of the MMPI-WAIS relationship.…”