Discrimination of healthy and brain-damaged elderly using the WAIS-R

The authors evaluated the ability of WAIS-R variables to discriminate normal from brain-damaged persons 75 years of age and older. Fifty-four brain-damaged patients and 54 healthy elderly were matched on the variables of age, education, sex, and race. Significant level of performance differences emerged between the groups on all subtests and the three IQs. No group differences were found on the VIQ-PIQ discrepancy score or range of subtest scatter. Step-wise discriminant analysis revealed that Digit Symbol was the most potent WAIS-R variable, accounting for 34% of the variance and correctly classifying 79.6% of the subjects.