The neuropsychological phenotype in Turner syndrome.

Numerous studies have demonstrated a significant depression in performance IQ (PIQ) in Turner Syndrome (TS) females, but the neuropsychological interpretation of this finding remains unclear. The present study addressed the following questions regarding the neuropsychological phenotype in TS: Are TS women neuropsychologically impaired? Is the impairment lateralized and How consistent is the neuropsychological phenotype across TS individuals? Unlike previous studies, the present study utilized both normal and brain damaged female controls. All subjects were given an extended Halstead-Reitan neuropsychological battery. The TS females were significantly worse than normals but not significantly different from brain damaged females in their overall level of neuropsychological functioning. However, their impairment was not lateralized. Their pattern of lateralizing findings was similar to that found in the Diffuse and Normal groups, but significantly different from either the right or left unilateral lesion groups. Fairly consistent deficits were found on tests of visuospatial skills and long term memory, but there was considerable variability in all the other test findings among TS individuals. The results are discussed in relation to the recent findings (Inglis and Lawson, 1981) that verbal-performance IQ discrepancies may be unreliable indicators of lateralized cerebral dysfunction in females. Hence the depressed PIQ in TS appears not to indicate predominantly right hemisphere dysfunction and may not even indicate a consistent underlying neuropsychological phenotype.

Word Finding Test performance: effects of localization of cerebral damage, level of neuropsychological impairment, age, and education.

The Word Finding Test (WFT; Reitan, 1972) was developed as a measure of verbal problem solving ability. It has been shown to be sensitive to the presence of brain damage, and to be more sensitive in this regard than several other verbal tests. The present study explored the relationships between WFT performances and lesion localization, level of general neuropsychological impairment, age, and education. The results from 165 brain-damaged and 129 normal control Ss indicated that the WFT is sensitive to cerebral damage, regardless of lesion localization. However, this test is not helpful in making localization inferences. WFT scores also were correlated significantly with level of impairment, age, and education.

The adjective generation technique: consistency of self-description in psychiatric patients.

There has been considerable controversy about whether human behavior is consistent across situations and time. Using the adjective generation technique (AGT), Allen and Potkay (1973, 1977a) found that subjects' self-favorability was quite variable and concluded that this did not support Bem and Allen's (1974) position that the consistency would be greater if idiographic assessment techniques were utilized. Bem (1977) criticized this conclusion, making the points that the AGT is not idiographic and that the favorability value of each day should be considered as a single item in a larger test rather than be considered independently. The present study was designed to address both the consistency of behavior across time and also the controversy regarding the AGT. Eleven psychiatric inpatients completed the AGT for 30 consecutive days. The results indicated that while AGT values are highly variable on a day-to-day basis, these values are quite consistent when averaged across even short periods of time. These results are very similar to those reported by Epstein (1979).

A comparison of negative practice and systematic desensitization in the treatment of acrophobia.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a symptom scheduling technique in reducing excessive fear. Acrophobic subjects were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions (negative practice, desensitization, and relaxation only) or to a waiting list control. Results from four self-report measures and a behavioral measure indicated that negative practice and desensitization were comparably effective. The relaxation only treatment was generally less effective, but did produce some improvement. It was concluded that symptom scheduling can be an effective treatment for acrophobia, and that these results are likely to generalize to clinical populations.

Diagnostic utility of the Thurstone Word Fluency Test in neuropsychological evaluations.

Previous research has found that verbal associative fluency tasks are sensitive to the presence of cerebral lesions and more sensitive to frontal lobe and left hemisphere lesions than to other focal lesions. The present study investigated the diagnostic utility of the Thurstone Word Fluency Test (TWFT), a test of written verbal fluency, in detecting and localizing cerebral lesions. Using results from 203 brain-damaged and 134 normal subjects, we found that TWFT performance is affected by cerebral damage generally. At the same time, it is more impaired by frontal than by nonfrontal, by left than by right hemisphere, and by left frontal than by right frontal lesions. This test does not discriminate focal frontal from diffuse lesions. Stepwise discriminant function analyses indicated that the TWFT adds to the Halstead-Reitan Battery in discriminating focal frontal from nonfrontal lesions, but not in discriminating left hemisphere from right hemisphere lesions. Only markedly impaired TWFT performances had lateralizing significance.

A comparison of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and the Category Test.

An important clinical question is whether the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and the Category Test, two tests of abstraction and concept formation, are interchangeable. This study attempted to answer this question by correlation results on the two tests and comparing their diagnostic accuracy in large groups of brain-damaged patients (N = 207) and normal controls (N = 150). It was concluded that these tests are not clinically interchangeable and that both can make important contributions to a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment.