Early Patterns of Verbal Memory Impairment in Children Treated for Medulloblastoma

Children treated for medulloblastoma demonstrate a variety of cognitive deficits in addition to white matter and hippocampal neuropathology. This study examined 40 children treated for medulloblastoma as compared with 40 demographically matched controls on the California Verbal Learning Test-Children's Version ( D. C. Delis, J. H. Kramer, E. Kaplan, & B. A. Ober, 1994 ). Results revealed significantly poorer performance on indices of word recall in the patient group as compared with the controls in addition to milder but still significantly poorer recognition memory. These findings suggest that children treated for medulloblastoma demonstrate a mixed profile of memory impairment consisting of both retrieval and recognition deficits. Implications of these findings for understanding neurobehavioral sequelae within pediatric medulloblastoma populations and for designing educational and remediation strategies to be used with these children are discussed.