Utility of California Verbal Learning Test, Second Edition, recall discriminability indices in the evaluation of traumatic brain injury.
This article by J Donders and J Nienhuis from the mary Bed hospital in michigan takes a look at the realtionship between traumatic brain injury and the california verbal test.
The performance of 23 patients with moderate-severe traumatic brain injury on the California Verbal Learning Test, Second Edition (CVLT-II; Delis et al., 2000) was compared with that of 23 matched healthy controls to determine whether recall discriminability indices, which take into account both correct target recall and intrusive errors, would provide better diagnostic classification than traditional variables that are based exclusively on correct recall. Patients with traumatic brain injury recalled fewer correct words, and also made more intrusive errors, on CVLT-II short and long delay, free and cued recall trials (p < .02 for all variables after Stepdown Bonferroni correction). However, recall discriminability indices yielded a classification of clinical versus control participants (72%) that was not significantly different from one based on traditional variables (74%). We conclude that CVLT-II recall discriminability indices do not routinely provide an advantage over traditional variables in patients with traumatic brain injury.
The full article can be found via pubmed; Identifier number 17286892