Comparison of two short forms of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test

Abstract

Two short forms of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) were evaluated. The WCST-64 consists of one deck of 64 cards; derived measures are number of categories obtained and number of perseverative responses. The WCST-3 includes measures of the number of cards required to complete three categories and the number of perseverative responses. WCST protocols from 37 schizophrenics, 20 temporal lobe epileptics, 11 patients with probable SDAT, and 54 normal controls, were scored using the three methods. Pearson correlations between WCST and WCST-64 scores ranged from.70 to.91. while correlations between WCST and WCST-3 were somewhat lower (.36 to.82). The WCST-64 was superior to the WCST-3 in agreement with the full WCST. The WCST-3 tended to underestimate the number of perseverative responses on the full WCST. Although the use of a short form reduces reliability, the WCST-64 appears to be an acceptable alternative when administration of the full WCST is not possible.