Comparability of the expanded WMS-III standardization protocol to the published WMS-III among right and left temporal lobectomy patients

We examined whether differences between the expanded standardization protoc ol (SP) used to derive norms for the final published version (PB) of the We chsler Memory Scale - Third Edition (WMS-III; Wechsler, 1997a) would result in differences on the Primary Indexes in a neurologic sample. Specifically , we examined the comparability of the performances of 63 patients with tem poral lobectomy (TL) who were administered either the expanded SP protocol (n = 33: 22 left TL and 11 right TL) or the PB battery (n = 30: 11 left TL and 19 right TL). Patients who were administered the SP or PB were comparab le in terms of age, sex, education, seizure duration, postsurgical seizure status, and Full Scale IQ. Postoperative intervals were significantly longe r for the SP group, although correlational analyses demonstrated no signifi cant relationship between postoperative follow-up interval and WMS-III perf ormance. A series of t tests revealed no significant differences on any of the eight Primary Index scores between patients taking the two versions of the WMS-III for either left or right TL groups. Furthermore, repeated measu res analyses of variance failed to show significant differences on modality -specific memory scores between the SP and PB for the left and right TL gro ups. The current study indicates that temporal lobectomy patients obtained comparable scores on the two versions of the WMS-III.