Reply: Timing of brain damage and verbal-performance IQ tilts

Sir, Many thanks for providing the opportunity to respond to the letter from Dr Gordon concerning our recent paper: Childhood brain insult: can age at insult help us predict outcome? (Anderson et al. , 2009). We are grateful for the chance to clarify the issues raised. The first point raised by Gordon (2009) correctly identified an error in the data presented in Table 5 of our paper. This error has been acknowledged and addressed separately in a recent Corrigendum published in Brain . Importantly, this was a clerical error regarding labelling of variables within the table. Interpretation of the results and data were not impacted by this error. The second issue of the contention relates to our finding that verbal IQ (VIQ) was consistently less than performance IQ (PIQ) in all groups in our sample. Subsequent analyses confirm …