Psycholinguistic Abilities in Children with Epilepsy

Abstract

The Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities was administered to 22 children with petit mal epilepsy and 28 children evidencing mixed seizures to determine whether any differences would be found when these 2 groups were compared either with each other or with a randomly selected group of nonepileptic children equivalent with respect to age, sex, and intelligence. Results obtained by analysis of variance revealed no significant differences in the 10 subtest scores either between the 2 epileptic groups or between the epileptics and the contrast group. Further, there was no greater proportion of learning disabilities among the epileptic subjects than among the contrast group, which would suggest that there is no necessity for special education provisions solely on the basis of a diagnosis of epilepsy.