Premorbid psychometric indicators of the gene for Huntington's disease

Follow-up was made of 88 Ss who had a 50% chance of inheriting Huntington's disease (HD) from a parent and who had been tested 15-20 yrs previously. Striking differences were seen in premorbid mean test scores (Shipley-Institute of Living Scale for Measuring Intellectual Impairment, Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test, and the Wechsler intelligence tests) between 28 Ss who developed HD and 60 Ss who remained free of HD symptoms. The overall pattern of mean test scores showed progressively lower scores with increased closeness to overt HD. Attempts at "prediction" with test scores were made. Although hit-miss ratios as high as 3 to 1 were found with the intellectual tests, cross-validation could drastically reduce the high prediction accuracy. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).