Comparison of the performance of normal individuals and survivors of traumatic brain injury on repeat administrations of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test

Repeat administrations of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) are a comm on clinical practice to assess changes in cognitive functions of individual s recovering from traumatic brain injury (TBI). Yet, little is even known a bout the performance of healthy individuals on repeat administrations of th e test. The present study compared the effects of repeat administration of the WCST in normal individuals and survivors of traumatic brain injury. Nor mal participants were administered the WCST twice, with a 5-month interval between testings and the findings were compared to the data from patients w ith TBI tested twice. Normal controls only modestly improved their performa nce on repeat testing. In constrast, using a reliability of change (RC) ind ex, TBI survivors demonstrated clinically meaningful gains in performance.