PROBLEIr
A series of items believed to be related t o organic brain damage was collected from a survey of clinical and research literature of human figure drawings. The purpose of this study was to determine which items were both reliable and valid. Alcoholics were used as Ss since as a group they show high variability on braindamage testingc2).
METHOD
Subjects. Ss were 80 ambulatory, detoxified chronic male alcoholics with a mean age of 43.1 years and a mean of 11.9 years of education, selected randomly from among inpatients who were participating in a treatment program described by Bell(l). Ss had been drinking for an average of 23 years and problem drinking for 9.6 years. They were tested after an average of 16.9 days from their last drink.
Measurements. Ss were asked to draw a person and then one of the opposite sex according t o standard Draw-a-Person instructions. They also were administered the Wechsler-Bellevue I (') and the Halstead-Reitan (4, 6 , battery of tests sensitive to organic brain damage. An Impairment Index, Performance I& (PI&) and a clinician's ratings served as validating criteria.
Halstead's Impairment Index was modified by including the Trail Making Test (with cutting points between 12 and 13) and scoring the Finger Tapping Test according to the criterion of Vega( 5) for the dominant hand. The following additional tests contributed t o the Impairment Index used with standard cutting pcints: Category, Rhythm, Speech and the Time, Memory and Location components of Tactual Performance. The range of this modified Impairment Index (11) was from 0 to .8.
A clinician unfamiliar with the research rated each S's drawings for organicity present, partially present, or absent. As an approximate check cn these ratings the authors also scored the drawings on the same dimension. They attempted, as much as possible, not t o be influenced by their knowledge of the items under investigation. The clinician's ratings correlated with those of the authors .48 and .71,