Re-Analysis of the Performance of Traumatic Brain Injury Patients on the Available Neuropsychological Tests

Abstract

The aim of this study was to re-analyze the performance of traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients on the available neuropsychological tests, and to introduce how to develop a desirable screening test battery. The relationship between the cognitive status and the sub-scale scores of the neuropsychological tests such as Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) was analyzed by step-wise multipleregression analyses. Four facets of cognitive status were the criterion variables (scholastic ability, memory, attention, and information processing speed), which were rated by four medical staff members. The explanatory variables were the subtest scores of WAIS-R, Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test, Mini-Mental State Examination, Prose Recall Test, and Letter Cancellation Test. Based on the findings of multiple-regression analyses, a desirable screening test battery was proposed. Key words: traumatic brain injury, cognitive disorder, screening test batteryIn recent years, cognitive disorders of traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients have become one of the main topics in neuropsychology (e.g. Ponsford, Sloan, & Snow, 1995;Rose & Johnson, 1996). In this trend, researchers have begun to examine the relations between TBI and cognitive functions in more detail. For example, Whyte, Schuster, Potansky, Adams, and Coslett (2000) reported that TBI patients were markedly less attentive than demographically comparable controls. Researches also indicate that TBI patients show memory disorders. Shum, Harris, and Gorman (2000) investigated an effect of TBI on visual memory, and found that TBI patients made more false-positive errors than controls. Ewing-Cobbs, Fletcher, Levin, Iovino, and Miner (1998) found that patients showed a decline of academic achievement in a prospective longitudinal followup study (2 years). In their studies, TBI patients scored lower than controls on arithmetic and reading comprehension tests, and the achievement score of patients did not recover even after 6 months after injury.In Japan, Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has started a new research project about cognitive disorders of TBI patients from July 2001. Based on this action, we started to investigate cognitive functions after injury. But there are several critical problems for

Reliability and Validity of the Digit Cancellation Test, a Brief Screen of Attention

“…Therefore, all participants were suspected diffused axonal injury because of their etiology and symptoms. Specific neuropsychological test results for this sample were reported elsewhere by Ito and Hatta (2003).…”