[Influence of actual epileptic seizures on performance and personality in epileptic children (author's transl)].

A test battery was administered to 108 brain-damaged epileptic backward children. The purpose of the investigation was to examine the influence of actual seizures (free of seizures or not) on intelligence, visuomotoric gestalt function, sensoric motoric function and personality characteristics. The two-failed t-test, discriminant analyses, regression analyses and factor analyses were computed. Most differences in performance (intelligence, visual perception, motoric function) between the diagnostic groups (free of seizures vs. not free of seizures) were statistically significant (P less than 1%); the differences in personality characteristics, however, were not statistically significant (P greater than 1%). The administered tests differentiated the two groups: 90% of the 108 subjects were correctly classified due to a clinical criterion. Motoric and perseverance variables were the most important variables of the discriminant function. Subjects without seizures scored higher than subjects with epileptic seizures. As a result of factor analyses personality variables and performance variables constituted different factors in most cases. An important exception concerning the group "free of seizures" was the variable "Pathognomic verbalization": this variable and performance variables were part of one factor. In subjects "not free of seizures", however, this variable and other personality variables clustered together in one factor.