The usefulness of a psychological test battery

This paper discusses the usefulness of a battery of psychological tests administered to a group of psychiatric geriatric patients in New York and London, as an assessment of cognitive impairment. Two of the tests, the Paired Associate Learning Test, and the Digit Copying Test, were highly related to the diagnosis of organic brain syndrome or functional disorder made independently by a psychiatrist in a clinical interview. Prognostic predictions in disagreement cases were no better or no worse by psychiatric diagnosis than by psychological tests. Compared to a simple clinical test of disorientation derived from the psychiatric interview, psychological tests were more highly correlated to independent measures of patients' self-care capacity and duration of hospitalization, but equally related to psychiatric diagnosis. The verbal subtest proved to be the more useful of the psychological tests given. The logistics and difficulties of administering psychological tests to this specialized population are discussed, e.g. patients' physical limitations, communication problems; as well as efforts in this study to minimize these problems.