Abnormal Examination and Brain Trauma

In order to discover how damaged a person’s abilities may be from either a disease affecting their brain or from brain trauma, it is necessary to discover how the person might have functioned before the incident. Premorbid functioning is important to measure when you are presented with someone with damage to their brain so that it is known how much the disorder/lesion/etc. is effecting the person’s intelligence, and specifically which regions and tasks are affected. There are several tests and tasks that can be used to measure a person’s premorbid functioning, but the following two tests are often used.

The first test is called the Ammons Quick Test, which is a passive-response picture-vocabulary test. The test can be administered to the physically handicapped and individuals with attention span problems and it correlates quite easily with the WAIS Full Scale IQ. An Ammons Quick Test raw score of 46 translates to a WAIS IQ score of 110, which is in the high average range of functioning for an adult.

The next test is called the North American Adult Reading Test (NAART), which is a reading test used for comparison of current intelligence with a more comprehensive test. This test is used to estimate verbal intellectual ability, and is a valid comparison in psychometric properties to the WAIS Vocabulary test. Generally, the NAART scores increase over one’s life span and with education.

Another test that is used for estimating premorbid functioning is called the Wide Range Achievement Test. This test measures the level of performance in reading, spelling, and written arithmetic. Reading and spelling tests are most often used in estimating premorbid intellectual functioning.