The separation of organics from depressives with ability-and personality-based tests

Abstract

Previous research has indicated that ability-oriented organicity tests are of limited value in the separation of brain-damaged from schizophrenic patients in psychiatric hospitals. In the present study the capabilities of nine ability test measures and the MMPI Depression scale to differentiate organics from depressives were evaluated. Only six of the nine ts used to evaluate the differences between the two groups were significant at the 0.5 level and, after the samples were levelled for age, education and IQ, the number fell to zero. In contrast, the Depression scale differences were highly significant both before and after levelling. Multiple correlations run to evaluate the use of personality and ability measures in combination showed that they had considerable promise and suggest that the separation of organic from functional psychiatric hospital groups is best achieved by such combinations.

The relationship between depressive symptoms and cognitive dysfunction in multiple sclerosis

“…Compared to the relatively robust research supporting cognitive deficits in healthy depressed persons (Breslow, Kocsis, & Belkin, 1980;Deptula & Yozawitz, 1984;Fischer, Sweet, & Pfaelzer-Smith, 1986;Savard, Rey, & Post, 1980;Shipley et al, 1981;Sternberg & Jarvik, 1976;Watson, Davis, & Gassen, 1978), researchers have only recently begun to support a significant relationship between depression symptomatology and cognitive functioning within the multiple sclerosis (MS) population. Several studies have failed to find a significant relationship between cognitive impairment and depression in persons with MS (DeLuca, Barbieri, & Johnson, 1994;Grafman et al, 1991;Minden et al, 1990;Rao, Leo, & St. Aubin-Faubert, 1989).…”

Separation of brain-damaged from psychiatric patients with ability and personality measures

“…Among the tests that have failed to discriminate organic from psychiatric groups (and, particularly, from schizophrenics) satisfactorily in various studies are the Bender-Gestalt (Watson, 1968), the Halstead tests (Lacks, Colbert, Harrow, & Levine, 1970;Watson, Thomas, Felling, & Andersen, 1968), the Trail-Making Test (Orgel & McDonald, 1967;Smith & Boyce, 1962;Watson, Thomas, Felling, & Andersen, 1969), the Memory-For-Designs (Watson, 1968), the Draw-A-Person (Watson, 1967), and the Minnesota Percepto-Diagnostic Test (Watson & Uecker, 1966 Davis & Gasser, 1978), the Background Interference Procedure variation of the Minnesota Percepto-Diagnostic Test (BIP-MPD; cf. Several investigators have reported themselves unable to differentiate the two with various ability measures.…”

“…These measures include the Psychiatric-Organic (P-0) scale of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), an empirically constructed 56-item measure designed to separate organics from a wide spectrum of functional psychiatric groups (Watson & Plemel, 1978). Additionally, three studies (Watson, 1973;Watson, Davis & Gasser, 1978;Watson & Plemel, 1978) have suggested that combinations of ability and personality tests are more useful in the separation of organics from functional patients than either type of measure used alone. Therefore, the capability of the strongest of our three ability tests to separate organic from functional groups in combination with the P-0 scale also was evaluated.…”

Separation of brain-damaged from psychiatric patients with the combined use of an ability and a personality test: A validation study with a Puerto Rican population

“…Recently, though, a successful new approach that uses an ability-based test and a personality test in combination has proven to be more efficient than either of the two approaches described above in the task of separating brain-damaged from psychiatric patients (Watson, 1973;Watson, Davis, & Gasser, 1978;. In a pioneer study, Watson et al (1981) proved not only that the combined use of an abilitybased and personality test resulted in greater mean hit rates, but also that the specific combined use of the SDMT and the MMPI (P-0), among other combinations of tests, produced the most encouraging results by correctly identifying 90% of the organic sample and 79% of the functional/psychiatric sample, an overall mean hit rate of 84.5%.…”