PERFORMANCE OF NORMAL ADULTS ON THE LURIA-NEBRASKA NEUROPSYCHOLOGICALBATTERY, FORM I

To examine three problems in the interpretation of the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery (LNNB), the normal participants from four d ifferent studies were pooled to form a sample of 241 LNNB profiles. Th e first problem addressed was the LNNB's false positive rate. AII five yes/no decision rules were applied simultaneously. Each individual ru le had a 0% to 8% false positive rate: combining the rules in four dif ferent ways increased the false positive rate by 0% to 6%. When divide d into over, and under 65 years old groups, each rule applied to the y ounger group had a 0% to 5% false positive rate: combining them increa sed the rate to 6-8%. When applying the rules to the older group, each rule had a 0 to 27% false positive rate: combining all rules but the one with the highest error rate produced a false positive rate of 27%. The false positive rate for the entire sample was 12%. To solve the s econd problem of interpretation, making qualitative item analyses easi er; the difficulty level (i.e., percentage of normals missing the item ) for each item was calculated. The third problem was the LNNB's malin gering formula's accuracy. The formula was applied to the sample: as e xpected, the normal profiles had all inaccuracy rate of 26%. The few m ildly impaired profiles had a 6% inaccuracy rate. When applied to the entire sample of normals and using rile appropriate interpretive guide lines, the formula had a false positive rate of 1%. (C) 1998 National Academy of Neuropsychology. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.