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The relationship between mood and executive functioning is of particular importance to neuropsychologists working with mixed psychiatric samples. The present study evaluated the relation of self-reported depression and anxiety to several common measures of executive functioning: the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, the Trail Making Test, the Controlled Oral Word Association, and the Letter-Number Sequencing subtest of the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale-III. Records from 86 adult patients evaluated in an outpatient psychiatry unit were examined. Correlations between self-reported depression or anxiety and most measures of executive functioning were small and non-significant. The variance predicted by depression or anxiety after controlling for age, gender, and IQ was minimal (typically < or =3.0%), even after conducting diagnostic subgroup analyses. These results suggest that impaired performance on measures of executive functioning is minimally related to self-reported depression and anxiety within mixed psychiatric settings.

Measures of verbal fluency are common additions to neuropsychological evaluations. Due to the literature demonstrating the impact of demographic variables on these measures, corrective norms have recently been published. However, these norms have yet to be cross-validated. This study sought to cross-validate these norms in a racially diverse psychiatric sample. In addition, this study sought to evaluate the utility of Wide Range Achievement Test, 3rd Edition (WRAT3) Reading Recognition and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition (WAIS-III) Vocabulary in attenuating the effect of demographic variables on these measures of verbal fluency. Results supported the utility of Gladsjo et al.'s (1999) norms. Further analysis revealed that both WRAT3 Reading Recognition and WAIS-III Vocabulary scores also attenuated the impact of demographic variables on these measures and accounted for more of the variance. Together, these results suggest that, although the demographically corrected norms adequately attenuate the impact of these variables, norms corrected for WRAT3 Reading Recognition or WAIS-III Vocabulary may account for more of the variance and therefore might be more appropriate and universally applicable.