Differentiation of organics from schizophrenics at two chronicity levels by use of the Reitan-Halstead Organic Test Battery.

Attempted to determine whether the Reitan-Halstead Organic Test Battery separates neuropsychiatric hospital organics from schizophrenics. It was administered to 25 schizophrenics and 25 cerebral-lesion organics at each of 2 chronicity levels. Only 1 of the 24 diagnosis/diagnosis * chronicity effects used to evaluate the data was significant at the .05 level, indicating that actuarial application of Reitan-Halstead scores is of no practical value in the separation of the 2 groups. To determine whether expert clinicians might improve upon the actuarial results, protocols of 24 schizophrenics and 24 organics were sent to 8 Reitan-Halstead experts who were instructed to separate them into brain-damaged and schizophrenic diagnostic groups. The mean number of correct classifications, 25.5 out of 48 suggested that clinical judgment added nothing to actuarial prediction in this case. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)