Differentiation of Verbal Memory Deficits in Blunt Head Injury Using the Recognition Trial of the California Verbal Learning Test: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Three categories of verbal memory deficits were established for head-injured patients using the Recognition Trial of the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT). The first category included subjects with fewer than normal correct recognitions and greater than normal false recognitions, the second included subjects with fewer than normal correct recognitions but a normal number of false recognitions, and the third included subjects who had normal numbers of both correct and false recognitions. Thirty of 32 head-injured subjects fell into these categories, and the distribution amongst the categories differed significantly from the control group on whom the “normal” criteria were established. It was then hypothesized that the three groups represented consolidation, encoding, and retrieval deficits, respectively, and this assumption was tested using patterns of performance on other parts of the CVLT. Although results gave some support for this model, a modified administration of the CVLT would be useful in testing other plausible models.