ORIENTATION AND 3-WORD RECALL IN PREDICTING MEMORY - AGE EFFECTS AND FALSE-NEGATIVE ERRORS

The purpose of this study was to determine how well orientation and th ree-word recall predict performance on a neuropsychological measure of short-term memory. The relationship between orientation/three-word re call and Logical Memory II (LMII) of the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised was analyzed using Pearson coefficients and discriminant function ana lyses. An initial analysis of three patient groups (cerebrovascular ac cident, mixed neurologic disorders, and traumatic brain injury), which differed also by age, revealed that orientation was insignificantly c orrelated with LMII across all patient groups. Three-word recall was m ost highly correlated with LMII with the older, CVA group and least co rrelated with the younger, traumatic brain injury sample. Discriminant function analyses in predicting impaired or normal LMII scores from o rientation and three-word recall revealed the lowest false-negative er ror rate for memory impairment with the CVA group and the highest fals e-negative error rate with the traumatic brain injury group. Subsequen t analyses with two younger, age-matched groups (a traumatic brain inj ury group and a mixed neurological group) confirmed that the above fin dings were related to age and not to diagnosis. Implications for using mental status measures to predict cognitive functioning in different clinical and age groups are discussed.