Commentary on Larrabee, Millis, and Meyers' paper 'sensitivity to brain dysfunction of the Halstead Reitan vs an ability-focused neuropsychological battery'

The study by Larrabee, Millis, and Meyers (2007) was designed to compare the sensitivity to brain dysfunction of the Halstead Reitan Battery (HRB) to an ability-focused battery using data from Russell's database. Appropriate cases were screened to eliminate participants "wherein external incentive (Veterans Disability) was a possible factor ..." (p. 815). However, VA compensation is not related to medical treatment since it requires an unrelated independent investigation. Russell's participants were diagnosed by faculty members of the University of Miami Medical School using CT scans etc. The Larrabee et al. (2007) SVT screening method combined two moderately sensitive digit span methods into an unvalidated procedure. This procedure's correct identification of response bias in brain-damaged participants was statistically no better than chance. The neurologically negative control group conformed to a standard distribution, when any substantial number of participants with response bias would have skewed the distribution. Both digit span and the SVT procedure correlated significantly with a validated index of brain damage severity. Since the screening procedure was not validated and it was sensitive to the severity of impairment, the type of participants that were represented was questionable, so the comparison study would be inconclusive.