Citation

Donders J, Janke K. J. Int. Neuropsychol. Soc. 2008; 14(4): 651-655.

Affiliation

Psychology Service, Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Cambridge University Press)

DOI

10.1017/S1355617708080752

PMID

18577295

Abstract

The performance of 40 children with complicated mild to severe traumatic brain injury on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fourth Edition (WISC-IV; Wechsler, 2003) was compared with that of 40 demographically matched healthy controls. Of the four WISC-IV factor index scores, only Processing Speed yielded a statistically significant group difference (p < .001) as well as a statistically significant negative correlation with length of coma (p < .01). Logistic regression, using Processing Speed to classify individual children, yielded a sensitivity of 72.50% and a specificity of 62.50%, with false positive and false negative rates both exceeding 30%. We conclude that Processing Speed has acceptable criterion validity in the evaluation of children with complicated mild to severe traumatic brain injury but that the WISC-IV should be supplemented with other measures to assure sufficient accuracy in the diagnostic process.

Language: en