Novel learning abilities after traumatic head injury in children

The cognitive abilities of 69 children with traumatic head injury (THI) were evaluated with the California Verbal Learning Test-Children's Version (CVLT-C; Delis, Kramer, Kaplan, & Ober, 1994), the Children's Category Test (CCT; Boll, 1993), and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III; Wechsler, 1991). Compared to children with mild to moderate injuries, children with severe THI demonstrated statistically significant impairments on the CVLT-C Total T-score as well as the WISC-III Processing Speed index, but findings for the CCT were less robust. Longer length of coma and male gender were associated with relatively poorer performance on the CVLT-C. Children with severe THI demonstrated difficulties with both capacity and speed of information processing, which could not be accounted for by attentional or general verbal knowledge factors. It is concluded that the combination of the CVLT-C and the WISC-III is useful in the evaluation of cognitive sequelae of THI but that findings from the CCT must be considered with some caution in this population.