Normative comparisons for the controlled oral word association test following acute traumatic brain injury.

The Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT) is widely used in clinical neuropsychology as a measure of verbal fluency. It is important for psychologists to realize that using the recently published normative data will result in different clinical conclusions because the updated normative sample performed better than the original normative sample. The purpose of this study was to compare the original and updated norms in a large sample of patients with acute traumatic brain injuries (N=669). The percentages of patients who scored below the 5th centile in each system varied as a function of brain injury severity. Moreover, a substantially larger number of patients scored in the impaired range according to the updated normative data.