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T
he purpose of this study was to determine the
reliability and validity of the Loewenstein Oc-
cupational Therapy Cognitive Assessment
(LOTCA) battery for brain-injured patients. The bat-
tery provides (a) a cognitive performance assessment
on which to base occupational therapy intervention
and (b) an objective way to examine clinical change.
The subtests of the LOTCA are specifically related to
rehabilitation purposes. "The tests are expected to
proVide a picture of the patient's abilities and defi-
ciencies with a view towards his capacity to cope with
everyday and occupational tasks" (Askenasy & Rah-
mani, 1988, p. 316).
Noami Katz, PhD, OTR, is Assistant Professor, School of Oc· Traumatic head injuries are a main cause of death
cupational Therapy, Hebrew University, Mount Scopus, for young persons in the United States and elsewhere,
PO Box 24026, Jerusalem 91240, Israel. and cause major and persisting disabilities that re-
Maika Itzkovich, OTR, is Research Coordinator, Occupa- quire long periods of treatment and rehabilitation
tional Therapy Department, Loewenstein Rehabilitation (Adamovich, Henderson, & Auerbach, 1985). The
Hospital, Raanana, Israel. high incidence and severity of head injuries warrant
the attention of health professionals such as occupa-
Sara Averbuch, OTR, is Senior Occupational Therapist, Loe-
wenstein Rehabilitation Hospital, and faculty member, Oc- tional therapists (Zoltan & Ryckman Meeder, 1985).
cupational Therapy Department, Tel Aviv University, Adults who have had cerebrovascular accidents
Ramat Aviv, Israel. (CVAs) make up one of the largest hospitalized popu-
lations, and they require long rehabilitation periods.
Betty Elazar, OTR, is Director, Occupational Therapy De-
This population represents the largest incidence of a
partment, Loewenstein Rehabilitation Hospital, Raanana,
single diagnosis evaluated and treated by occupa-
Israel.
tional therapists (Allen, 1985; Ottenbacher, 1980;
This article was accepted for publication October 27, 1988. Siev, Freishtat, & Zoltan, 1986; Trombly, 1983).
SCore
Subtests low high Comments
Orientation
Time 1 2 3 4
Place 1 2 3 4
Perception
Object identification 1 2 3 4
Shape identification 1 2 3 4
Overlapping figures 1 2 3 4
Object constancy 1 2 3 4
Spatial perception 1 2 3 4
Praxis 1 2 3 4
Visuomotor Organization
Copying geometric forms 1 2 3 4
Reproducing a two-dimensional 1 2 3 4
model
Constructing a pegboard design 1 2 3 4
Constructing a colored block design 1 2 3 4
Constructing a plain block design 1 2 3 4
Reproducing a puzzle 1 2 3 4
Drawing a clock 1 2 3 4
Thinking Operations
Categorization 1 2 3 4 5
ROC: Unstructured 1 2 3 4 5
Structured 1 2 3 4 5
Pictorial sequence 1 2 3 4
Geometrical sequence 1 2 3 4
As can be seen in Table 1, which summarizes the group. This is typical for the type of injUry. Mean years
demographic characteristics of the subjects, the dis- of education were similar in each group, but CVA
tribution of social position classes was not equaL The patients were generally lower in social position.
table shows also that the CCl group contained more
male subjects and younger subjects than the CVA Procedures
Every patient diagnosed with CVA or CCl who was
Table 1 admitted to the LRH during a 3-month period was
Subjects' Demographic Characteristics assessed with the LOTCA battery upon referral to oc-
CCI Group CVA Group Control Group cupational therapy, and again after 2 months of treat-
Variable (n = 20) (n = 28) (n = 55) ment. The second test was intended to proVide a per-
Sex formance profile after initial recovery, which would
Male 15 14 26 suggest more long-lasting problem areas.
Female 5 14 29
Age i (SD) 254 (93) 57.5 (73) 426 (126) Six occupational therapists trained to administer
Years of the evaluation tested the subjects. lnterrater reliability
education 96 (30) 92 (4.0) 13.3 (44) was determined prior to data collection in two ways.
Social
position First, three pairs of raters tested 10 subjects, and each
class I 0 2 10 separately scored the subjects' performance on the 19
II 0 0 15 subtests. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient be-
III 2 3 13
IV 4 5 9
tween the raters showed interrater reliability ranging
V 4 18 8 from .82 to .97 for the various subtests. Second, a
Soldiers 10 video recording of the assessment of one patient was
Note. CCI = craniocerebral injUry. CVA = cerebrovascular accident made. Each of the six therapists indiVidually viewed
Table 2
Means and Standard Deviations of the LOTCA Subtests for Three Populations
CCI Group Assessments CVA Group Assessments
Control Group
Subtests 2 2 Assessments
ORIENTATION
Copying geometric forms 2.5 (13) 32 (95) 2.8 (10) 30 (96) 39 (0.3)
Reproducing a two-
dimensional model 27 (14) 34 (88) 2.6 (12) 31 (97) 39 (0.4)
Constructing a pegboard
design 24 (13) 33 (11) 24 (I I) 28 (11) 38 (0.5)
Constructing a colored
block design 2.6 (14) 33 (11) 25 (1.3) 27 (14) 38 (0.5)
Constructing a plain
block design 24 (12) 30 (1.3) 2.0 (1.3) 23 (12) 37 (06)
Reproducing a puzzle 24 (13) 30 (12) 20(1.1) 24 (13) 38 (0.6)
DraWing a clock 23 (13) 30 (12) 25 (1.0) 28(1.1) 38 (0.5)
THINKING OPERATIONS
nizational abilities (Najenson et al., 1984). A very sim- ceiling effect). Differences among them may be bet-
ilar factor structure can be seen in the factor analysis ter explained by- basic perceptual differences or by
of items measuring perceptual functions that was per- the most elementary praxis and pictorial sequence
formed by Eriksson, Bernspang, and Fugl-Meyer, thinking test, in which the variability was very small,
(1988). In their analysis, visuomotor organization than by the somewhat more complex tests in which
items (termed high-order perception) loaded on Fac- the variability was greater (see Table 2). However,
tor 1, and visual and spatial perception items (termed because the number of control subjects was small for
low-order perception) loaded on Factor 2, which ex- a factor analysis, the results should be confirmed with
plained 49% and 16.3% of the variance, respectively, a larger group. Interestingly, in both groups, shape
for a group of 109 stroke patients. (Some of their identification loaded on the same factor as thinking
items were adapted from an earlier version of the operations. The reason for this appears to be that the
LOTCA). test included four familiar shapes, such as circle,
In the control group, the results were different. square, triangle, and rectangle, but also four more
Three Perception subtests loaded highly (above .89) difficult ones, such as rhomboid, trapezoid, hexagon,
on Factor 1, along with Praxis and pictorial sequence, and half-circle, so that it became more than a basic
which explained 33% of the variance. Factor 2 con- identification task. As scored in the study, shape
sisted of the Shape Identification and Thinking Oper- identification seemed to require higher formal knowl-
ations, subtests and had lower loadings (around .50) edge; therefore, it clustered together with the same
for reproducing a two-dimensional model, construct- factor as thinking operations.
ing a pegboard design, and draWing a clock. Factor 3 Comparison between the groups showed that,
was composed of 3 Visuomotor Organization sub- within the patient group, the area of visuomotor orga-
tests: block design, constructing a plain block design, nization explained the most variance in performance,
and copying geometric forms. and the other two areas (perception and thinking
The profile of the control group was different in operations) explained almost equal percentages of
the importance of the factors accounting for the vari- the variance. In contrast, within the control group,
ance, which seemed to be due to the fact that all perception explained the most variance, followed by
subjects performed high on almost all subtests (a thinking operations; visuomotor organization contrib-