Clinical Spanish Norms of the Stroop Test for Traumatic Brain Injury and Schizophrenia

Abstract

AbstractThe Stroop Color-Word Test is a useful tool to evaluate executive attention and speed of processing. Recent studies have provided norms for different populations of healthy individuals to avoid misinterpretation of scores due to demographic and cultural differences. In addition, clinical norms may improve the assessment of cognitive dysfunction severity and its clinical course. Spanish normative data are provided for 158 closed traumatic brain injury (TBI) and 149 first-episode schizophrenia spectrum disorder (SCH) patients. A group of 285 Spanish healthy individuals (HC) was also considered for comparison purposes. Differences between groups were found in all Stroop scores with HC outperforming both clinical groups (p < .002 in all cases; d > .3 in all cases). TBI patients scored lower than SCH patients in word-reading (p < .001 and d = .6), and color-naming conditions (p < .001 and d = .4), but not in the color-word condition (p = .34 and d = .03). However, SCH patients exhibited a higher interference effect as compared to TBI (p < .002 and d = .5). Three sets of norms stratified by age and education (HC), and by education (TBI and SCH) are presented for clinical use.