ASSESSMENT OF THE USEFULNESS OF NEUROPSYC HOLOGICAL SHORT TESTS FOR THE DETECTION OF ACQUIRED COGNITIVE DEFICITS, ILLUSTRATED BY REFERENCE TO THE CI TEST OF LEHRL AND FISCHER

The aim of the study was to find whether the c.I. test is useful for t he exclusion and the demonstration of acquired cognitive deficits. In all, 195 patients with brain damage and 68 neurotic patients were exam ined with the c.I. test and with a comprehensive number of neuropsycho logical tests. The hit rate of the c.I. test for the whole group was 6 7% and lay lower than the base rate of 74% brain damaged patients resp ectively only unessentially higher than the base rate of 64% patients with unambiguous acquired cognitive deficits. There were very low hit rates especially in patients with absent (46%) or low-grade cognitive deficit (54%) and with low (55%) or with high premorbid mental abiliti es (55%). Both the low correlations between the c.I. test and the vali dity criterion as well as the considerable overlapping of the c.I. tes t raw score distributions, grouped by grades of cognitive deficits, in dicate serious deficiencies in the test. The extremely brief c.I. test possesses an inadequate grade of difficulty and cannot detect low- an d medium grade acquired cognitive deficits, and its orientation to abi lity-related global syndromes means that partial, multifactorial and g eneral cognitive deficits are neglected. The c.I. test is therefore no t useful as a screening method for the diagnosis of acquired cognitive deficits.