A Five‐ to Fifteen‐Year Follow‐up Study of Infantile Psychosis: IV. Patterns of Cognitive Ability

Abstract

Sixty‐three children with an unequivocal diagnosis of infantile psychosis who attended the Maudsley Hospital between 1950 and 1958 were individually matched for age, sex, IQ and year of attendance with a control group of clinic children with non‐psychotic disorders. Both groups were re‐examined in 1963–4 and given individual psychiatric, neurological, social and psychological assessments. At follow‐up (mean age 15 years 7 months) the psychotic children showed low scores on tests of verbal ability and higher scores on performance tests. They showed a characteristic WISC subtest pattern of high scores on the Block Design, Object Assembly and Digit Span subtests combined with a very low score on Comprehension; this pattern was more marked among the children with a pronounced language retardation. Similar patterns of Wechsler Performance Scale scores have been found in deaf children with poor language and in children with developmental disorders of language. This was interpreted in terms of the hypothesis that infantile psychosis develops on the basis of a central disorder of language and of perception of sounds. The psychotic children as a group were inferior to the controls in terms of social competence. Among the psychotics the mean SQ was significantly lower than their Non‐Verbal IQ, whereas, among the controls, the two scores were approximately the same.