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CORRELATION BETWEEN INTELLECTUAL PERFORMANCE AND THE SEVERITY OF BRAIN INJURY
Author(s) -
Pihkanen Toivo,
Weckroth Johan
Publication year - 1962
Publication title -
acta neurologica scandinavica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.967
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1600-0404
pISSN - 0001-6314
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0404.1962.tb01096.x
Subject(s) - medicine , occupational safety and health , public health , occupational medicine , occupational exposure , family medicine , medical emergency , pathology
Two different approaches can be distinguished in thc psychological diagnostics of brain injury: the use of single tests as indicators of hrain injury and the pattern analytic technique, in which the diagnosis is based on the comparison of different ability in the individual ability profile. The pattern analytic methods used in connection with well known IQ-tests (such as, e.g. Wechsler) is based on the assumption that brain injury affects the performance capacity of a human being unevenly, in that some of the ability traits remain unchanged whereas others decline. This unevenness between subtests is termed deterioration. Although it is agreed that objective computational procedures should be developed for a more exact quantification of the ability profiles, many clinical psychologists regard the approach as fruitful and specially suitable precisely for the diagnosis of brain syndromes. The negative results obtained imply, on the other hand, that the method is by no means complete (cf., e.g., Allen 1948, Anderson 1950, and 11ogrr.s 1950). It is notable that the pattern analytic method is based on the assumption that the variance in different subtraits can be explained in terms of the same, identical factors in different groups ( c g . brain injury and control group). There is evidence, however, that this assumption is not necessarily correct (Cohen 1952, Weckroth 1961). Attention should further be called to the fact that quotient and difference variables of this kind differ from other primary variables usually employed in psychological studies in one significant respect: they arc in the nature of things, as it were less reliable. It is not uncommon, then, that the “good” results yielded by the original validity study are not confirmed, but often rejected, by cross-validation studies. There are obviously two possibilities of constructing deterioration indexes; firstly they can be based on the comparison of test pcrformances representing different factors, and, secondly, on the compari-