Structure of Wais Scores for Private Psychiatric Inpatients

Abstract

Factorial studies of WAIS subtests have yielded questionably consistent results, particularly in the number of factors obtained and in the assignment of subtests to factors. In view of the implications for clinical application of individual subtest and over-all Verbal and Performance contrasts to psychiatric inpatients, the present study investigated the replication of a previous summary study of WAIS factorial structure for inpatient groups and inspected potential differences between WAIS structure for two broadly defined levels of psychopathology. The results indicated basic consistency of structure across groups and in comparison of studies. However, although similar in basic factors to the other groups, the WAIS structure of the psychotic group of this study suggested that attentional and cooperational levels of the psychotic patient be carefully evaluated before application of subtest contrasts.