A new method for detecting brain disorder by measuring perseveration in personality inventory responses

A 130-item personality inventory (the Psychological Screening Inventory, Lanyon, 1970) was used to obtain a novel measure of perseveration coupled with affirmative set. Acquiescent Perseveration (AP), a quantitative behavioral metric, is the sum of the lengths of True (T) response runs 4 and longer, doubling T runs 9 and longer. With male subjects, a one-way ANOVA comparison of heterogeneous organics with five non-organic control groups (normals, neurotics, sociopaths, personality disorders, and schizophrenics) showed mean AP differences greater than .001 versus every control group. The measure, requiring no scoring key, was successfully cross-validated with six similar female groups. AP means for non-organics showed no increase across 5 decades of age. In small supplementary studies AP was related inversely to Shipley Abstraction (Shipley, 1940, 1946) scores and directly to the Halstead-Reitan Impairment Index (Reitan & Davison, 1974). AP, uncorrected for age, IQ or education, matches the best single cognitive neuropsychological tests in distinguishing organics from psychiatric patients. Inventory response sequences contain previously unrecognized latent data sensitive to neuropathology.