PROBLEM
The Halstead Category Test (HCT) (a) has been repeatedly shown to be sensitive to the presence of brain damage. A large number of studies have demonstrated this fact with variously composed groups of brain-damaged subjects and control normals. Space and time limitations preclude a comprehensive survey of this research but representative studies include the following. Reitan@), in his validation of Halstead's (a) neuropsychological test battery, found brain-damaged subjects to have significantly higher HCT error scores than their matched normal controls. Fitzhugh and Fitzhugh (2) found similar results when they compared control normals with three groups of brain-damaged subjects who differed in terms of acuteness and chronicity of impairment. Doehring and Reitan'') composed two groups of subjects with lateralized brain lesions and found the HCT error scores of both groups to be higher than that found in their control group. K14ve(6) compared two groups of brain-damaged subjects, those with and those without positive clinical neurologic examinations, to matched normal controls with similar results. Matthews, Shaw, and Kl~#,ve(7) demonstrated the utility of the HCT in making the difficult differential diagnosis between subjects with brain damage and individually matched subjects with symptoms strongly suggestive of neurologic disease or injury which, however, were eventually found to be psychogenic in origin.
This study investigates the reliability of the HCT and its validity as an indicator of severity of brain damage. "Severity" refers to the behavioral consequences of cerebral dysfunction as reflected in neuropsychological tests of basic adaptive abilities.
METHOD
Subject.
The sample consisted of 674 adult patients of both sexes referred to the Neuropsychological Laboratory of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine