Verbal and nonverbal skill discrepancies in children with hydrocephalus: a five-year longitudinal follow-up

Compared verbal and nonverbal skills of 65 children ages 5 to 7 years, with a history of shunted hydrocephalus (n = 26), arrested hydrocephalus (n = 11), and no hydrocephalus (n = 28), over a 5-year period. Comparison of these skills in 4 assessments revealed poorer average nonverbal than verbal skills on measures from the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities, the Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children-Revised (WISC-R), and composites of neuropsychological skills for the shunted hydrocephalus group in comparison to the arrested-hydrocephalus and no hydrocephalus groups. There were higher rates of significant discrepancies between WISC-R Verbal IQ (VIQ) and Performance IQ (PIQ), with PIQ < VIQ in the shunted group. However, relatively few children exhibited significant discrepancies on multiple test occasions. The poorer performance of the shunted hydrocephalus group could not be attributed to motor demands of the nonverbal tasks.