Improving assessment burden: Evaluation and comparison of time-efficient tests of verbal memory/learning in bipolar...

This study aimed to validate the California Verbal Learning Test - II Short Form (CVLT-II SF) for use in bipolar disorder (BD) and compare it with another brief measure; the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test - Revised (HVLT-R).

66 participants with BD and 35 psychiatrically healthy controls completed the CVLT-II SF and HVLT-R, from which key component scores were derived.

The BD group exhibited impairments of medium-to-large effect for the immediate, total, and delayed free recall, and retention rate scores of the CVLT-II SF. Most scores from the CVLT-II SF correlated with their respective scores from the HVLT-R, with large positive effects suggesting relative consistency in performance across the two tests in both the BD and control groups. However, larger patient-control effect sizes were evident on the CVLT-II SF for total free recall, and on the HVLT-R for delayed free recall and the delayed semantic clustering ratio, though non-equivalence was formally demonstrated for the latter only. Patient-control effect sizes were statistically equivalent for immediate free recall and total free recall semantic clustering ratio scores across the tests.

The CVLT-II SF is able to detect impairments in verbal memory/learning for most components that have been consistently found to be impaired in BD in previous work. Thus, it has utility as a brief verbal memory/learning measure for BD research that may be useful in time-constrained settings. However, the HVLT-R may represent a superior choice when the study of a comprehensive spectrum of memory components is required.