Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T00:40:14.515Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Estimating pre-morbid intellectual ability in the Alcoholic Korsakoff Syndrome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

R. E. O'Carroll ,
A. Moffoot ,
K. P. Ebmeier  and
G. M. Goodwin
R. E. O'Carroll*
Affiliation:
MRC Brain Metabolism Unit, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Edinburgh
A. Moffoot
Affiliation:
MRC Brain Metabolism Unit, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Edinburgh
K. P. Ebmeier
Affiliation:
MRC Brain Metabolism Unit, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Edinburgh
G. M. Goodwin
Affiliation:
MRC Brain Metabolism Unit, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Edinburgh
*
1 Address for correspondence: Dr R. E. O'Carroll, MRC Brain Metabolism Unit, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Morningside Park, Edinburgh EH10 5HF.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Synopsis

The National Adult Reading Test (NART) is widely used in clinical and research settings to estimate pre-morbid intellectual levels. The validity of the NART in estimating pre-morbid ability in Alcoholic Korsakoff Syndrome (AKS) is examined in the present study. Twenty AKS subjects were compared with 40 healthy controls. The validity of the NART as a pre-morbid measure in AKS was examined using four methods. AKS subjects made more NART errors than controls, had lower NART predicted IQ than demographically predicted IQ, made more NART errors than predicted by demographic variables and demonstrated NART performance which correlated with degree of memory impairment. It is concluded that NART performance is detrimentally affected by the AKS and that estimating pre-morbid intellectual level in Korsakoff's psychosis using the NART may be invalid. Furthermore, it is postulated that the impaired ability to pronounce correctly irregular words in AKS may reflect a failure in cognitive ‘error checking’ which may represent a consequence of frontal lobe dysfunction.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , November 1992 , pp. 903 - 909
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bowden, S. C. (1990). Separating cognitive impairment in asymptomatic alcoholism from Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome: is the neuropsychological distinction justified? Psychological Bulletin 107, 355–366.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Butters, N. (1985). Alcoholic Korsakoff's Syndrome: some unresolved issues concerning etiology, neuropathology, and cognitive deficits. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 7, 181–210.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Butters, N. & Cermak, L. S. (1980). Alcoholic Korsakoff's Syndrome: An Information-processing Approach to Amnesia. Academic Press: New York.Google Scholar
Crawford, J. F. (1989). Estimation of premorbid intelligence: a review of recent developments. In Developments in Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology. (ed. Crawford, J. R. and Parker, D. M.), pp. 55–74. Plenum Press: New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, J. R., Besson, J. A. O. & Parker, D. M. (1988 a). Estimation of pre-morbid intelligence in organic conditions. British Journal of Psychiatry 153, 178–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, J. R., Stewart, L. E., Garthwaite, P. H., Parker, D. M. & Besson, J. A. O. (1988 b). The relationship between demographic variables and NART performance in normal subjects. British Journal of Clinical Psychology 27, 181–182.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crawford, J. R., Parker, D. M., Stewart, L. E., Besson, J. A. O. & De Lacey, G. (1989 a). Prediction of WAIS IQ with the National Adult Reading Test: cross-validation and extension. British Journal of Clinical Psychology 28, 267–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, J. R., Stewart, L. E., Cochrane, R. H. B., Foulds, J. A., Besson, J. A. O. & Parker, D. M. (1989 b). Estimating premorbid IQ from demographic variables: regression equations derived from a UK sample. British Journal of Clinical Psychology 28, 275–278.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crawford, J. R., Allan, K. M., Cochrane, R. H. B. & Parker, D. M. (1990). Assessing the validity of NART estimated premorbid IQs in the individual case. British Journal of Clinical Psychology 29, 435–436.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hart, S., Smith, C. M. & Swash, M. (1986). Assessing intellectual deterioration. British Journal of Clinical Psychology 25, 119–124.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hunter, R., McLuskie, R., Wyper, D., Patterson, J., Christie, J. E., Brooks, D. N., McCulloch, J., Fink, G. & Goodwin, G. M. (1989). The pattern of function-related regional cerebral blood flow investigated by single photon emission tomography with 99mTc-HMPAO in patients with presenile Alzheimer's disease and Korsakoff's psychosis. Psychological Medicine 19, 847–855.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jacobson, R. R., Acker, C. F. & Lishman, W. A. (1990). Patterns of neuropsychological deficit in alcoholic Korsakoff's syndrome. Psychological Medicine 20, 321–334.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Joyce, E. M. & Robbins, R. W. (1991). Frontal lobe function in Korsakoff and non-Korsakoff alcoholics planning and spatial working memory. Neuropsychologia 29, 709–723.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kopelman, M. (1989). Remote and autobiographical memory, temporal content memory and frontal atrophy in Korsakoff and Alzheimer patients. Neuropsychologia 27, 437–460.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kopelman, M. (1991 a). Frontal dysfunction and memory deficits in the Alchoholic Korsakoff syndrome and Alzheimer-type dementia. Brain 114, 117–137.Google Scholar
Kopelman, M. (1991 b). Non-verbal, short-term forgetting in the Alchoholic Korsakoff syndrome and Alzheimer-type dementia. Neuropsychologia 29, 737–747.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leng, N. R. C. & Parkin, A. J. (1988). Double dissociation of frontal dysfunction in organic amnesia. British Journal of Clinical Psychology 27, 359–362.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McCarthy, R. A. & Warrington, E. K. (1990). Cognitive Neuropsychology, a Clinical Introduction. Academic Press: New York.Google Scholar
Mayes, A. R. (1988). Human Organic Memory Disorders. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayes, A. R., Meudell, P. R. & MacDonald, C. (1991). Disproportionate intentional spatial-memory impairments in amnesia. Neuropsychologia 29, 771–784.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nebes, R. D., Martin, D. C. & Horn, L. C. (1984). Sparing of semantic memory in Alzheimer's disease. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 93, 321–330.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nelson, H. (1982). National Adult Reading Test Manual. NFER-Nelson: Windsor.Google Scholar
Nelson, H. & O'Connell, A. (1978). Dementia: the estimation of premorbid intelligence using the New Adult Reading Test. Cortex 14, 234–244.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nelson, H. & Willison, J. R. (1991). Supplement to the Manual for the National Adult Reading Test. NFER-Nelson: Windsor.Google Scholar
O'Carroll, R. E. (1987). The inter-rater reliability of the National Adult Reading Test (NART): a pilot study. British Journal of Clinical Psychology 26, 229–230.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O'Carroll, R. E., Baikie, E. M. & Whittick, J. E. (1987). Does the National Adult Reading Test hold in dementia? British Journal of Clinical Psychology 26, 315–316.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O'Carroll, R. E. & Gilleard, C. J. (1986). Estimation of premorbid intelligence in dementia. British Journal of Clinical Psychology 25, 157–158.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS) (1980). Classification of Occupations. HMSO: London.Google Scholar
Roth, M., Tym, E., Mountjoy, C. Q., Huppert, F. A., Hendrie, H., Verma, S. & Goddard, R. (1986). CAMDEX A standardized instrument for the diagnosis of mental disorder in the elderly with specific reference to the early detection of dementia. British Journal of Psychiatry 149, 698–709.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlosser, D. & Ivison, D. (1989). Assessing memory deterioration with the Wechsler Memory Scale, the National Adult Reading Test, and the Schonell Graded Word Reading Test. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 11, 785–792.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shallice, T. (1988). From Neuropsychology to Mental Structure. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shallice, T. & Evans, M. (1978). The involvement of the frontal lobes in cognitive estimation. Cortex 14, 294–303.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sharpe, K. & O'Carroll, R. E. (1991). Estimating premorbid intellectual level in dementia using the National Adult Reading Test: a Canadian study. British Journal of Clinical Psychology 30, 381–384.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shoqeirat, M. A. & Mayes, A. R. (1991). Disproportionate incidental spatial-memory and recall deficits in amnesia. Neuropsychologia 29, 749–769.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shoqeirat, M. A., Mayes, A., MacDonald, C., Meudell, P. & Pickering, A. (1990). Performance on tests sensitive to frontal lobe lesions by patients with organic amnesia: Leng & Parkin revisited. British Journal of Clinical Psychology 29, 401–408.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Squire, L. R., Amaral, D. G. & Press, G. A. (1990). Magnetic resonance imaging of the hippocampal formation and mamillary nuclei distinguish medial temporal lobe and diencephalic amnesia. Journal of Neuroscience 10, 3106–3117.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stebbins, G. T., Wilson, R. S., Gilley, D. W., Bernard, B. A. & Fox, J. H. (1990). Use of the National Adult Reading Test to estimate premorbid IQ in dementia. Clinical Neuropsychologist 4, 18–24.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stuss, D. T. & Benson, D. F. (1984). Neuropsychological studies of the frontal lobes. Psychological Bulletin 95, 3–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Talland, G. A. (1985). Deranged Memory. Academic Press: New York.Google Scholar
Victor, M., Adams, R. D. & Collins, G. H. (1989). The Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome and Related Neurological Disorders due to Alcoholism and Malnutrition. F. A. Davis: Philadelphia.Google Scholar