THE DEGREE OF THE VERBAL-PERFORMANCE DISCREPANCY ON THE WISC AND THE WAIS AND SEVERITY OF EEG ABNORMALITY IN EPILEPTICS.

This article tests the hypothesis that the relationship between severity of organicity and the Verbal-Performance (V-P) discrepancy should increase as the discrepancy between verbal and performance IQ increases in an epileptic population. V-P discrepancies on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children for 87 children and on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale for 83 adults were classified as normal (1-7 points), moderately abnormal (8-17), and severely abnormal (18+). Electroencephalography (EEGs) for these epileptic patients were classified as normal, moderately abnormal, and abnormal. Contingency coefficients relating these two measures yielded non-significance. Determination of laterality of EEG dysfunctioning from the verbal-performance discrepancy was also non-significant. The study suggests that the usage of the V-P discrepancy to predict laterality is presently limited to acute-specific disorders.