Porteus maze performance following traumatic brain injury in children

To investigate planning in traumatically brain injured children, the author s gave the Porteus Maze Test (PMT; S. D. Porteus, 1959) to 276 pediatric pa tients who had sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI) at least 3 years pr eviously. Sensitivity of the PMT to TBI severity, age at test, and volume o f focal brain lesions detected by magnetic resonance imaging was also studi ed. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (L. M. Dunn & L. M. Dunn, 1 981) was also administered as a control measure. Results indicated that the PMT was highly sensitive to TBI severity and to volume of circumscribed pr efrontal lesions. In contrast to the PMT data, receptive vocabulary was rel ated to injury severity but not to discrete prefrontal lesions, Implication s for mechanisms of cognitive deficit after TBI in children are discussed.