Wechsler Memory Scale Paired-Associate Learning in Discrimination of Brain-Damaged and Non-Brain-Damaged Psychiatric Patients

Abstract

The Wechsler Memory Scale paired-associate learning performance of 32 brain-damaged and 32 non-brain-damaged age-matched inpatients was examined to assess the extent to which the groups would improve at different rates across the three administrations of the list. Both mean-difference and individual prediction analyses suggested that the non-brain-damaged Ss were improving more rapidly than the brain-damaged patients for Trial 1 versus Trial 2, although this was not the case for Trial 2 versus Trial 3. Moreover, an index based on relative improvement from Trial 1 to Trial 2 differentiated between the groups independently of their over-all level of memory functioning as reflected in Memory Quotient. These findings were interpreted as lending support to the hypothesis that repeated measures on the same Ss and under the same stimulus conditions might be useful in discriminating between brain-damaged and non-brain-damaged patients who did not differ on ability measures yielding single scores.