Novel learning abilities after traumatic head injury in children

The cognitive abilities of 69 children with traumatic head injury (THI) wer e evaluated with the California Verbal Learning Test-Children's Version (CV LT-C; Delis, Kramer, Kaplan, & Ober, 1994), the Children's Category Test (C CT; Boll, 1993), and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edi tion (WISC-III; Wechsler, 1991). Compared to children with mild to moderate injuries, children with severe THI demonstrated statistically significant impairments on the CVLT-C Total T-score as well as the WISC-III Processing Speed index, but findings for the CCT were less robust. Longer length of co ma and male gender were associated with relatively poorer performance on th e CVLT-C. Children with sever-e THI demonstrated difficulties with both cap acity and speed of information processing, which could not be accounted for by attentional or general verbal knowledge factors, it is concluded that t he combination of the CVLT-C and the WISC-III is useful in the evaluation o f cognitive sequelae of THI bnl that findings from the CCT must be consider ed with some caution in this population. (C) 1999 National Academy of Neuro psychology. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.