Abstract
The Purdue Pegboard was administered to 184 consecutively admitted patients of a state mental hospital, 26 of whom were diagnosed as brain damaged. Patients were classified as brain-damaged or not with 57% accuracy, compared to a base-rate accuracy of 86% by calling all Ss non-brain damaged. Analysis of Ss in terms of IQ and psychiatric diagnosis revealed no factor that might have contributed to the high proportion of Ss falsely identified as brain-damaged. Modification of cutting scores increased the accuracy of identification to 76%, but this increase was not considered sufficiently high to justify cross-validation. It was concluded that only in psychiatric populations where the base-rate frequency of brain damage exceeds 30% is the Purdue likely to be useful as a screening instrument.
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