Neuropsychological Assessment

Question 1

Lezak (1995) describes neuropsychological assessment as what?

Answer 1

Involves the study of behaviour by means of interview and standardised tests, but uses brain function as its point of reference.

Question 2

What brain functions can be assessed in neuropsychological assessments?

Answer 2

Cognition; mental activity, intelligence and general ability, language and academic ability, visuospatial and constructional skills, memory, executive function.

Question 3

Why assess different cognitive functions?

Answer 3

Differential diagnosis,

Documentation of functional strengths and weaknesses

Question 4

How do you conduct assessments?

Answer 4

Fixed battery approach
Flexible hypothesis-testing approach
Cognitive neuropsychological formulation

Question 5

Characteristics of the fixed battery approach?

Answer 5

Atheoretical, reduces interpreter bias

Exhaustive testing is time-consuming and inefficient

Question 6

Characteristics of the hypothesis-testing approach?

Answer 6

Loose parallels with cognitive neuropsychology
Efficient in narrowing focus of testing to relevant features
Less reliant on psychometrics, requiring greater clinical skills

Question 7

Characteristics of cognitive neuropsychological formulation?

Answer 7

Embraces parallels btw psychometric neuropsychology and cognitive psychology
Maintains efficient focus by tailoring process
Still employs good psychometric tools

Question 8

Interpreting quantitative results?

Answer 8

cutting scores
dissociations
pattern analysis
appropriate group norms

Question 9

Interpreting qualitative results?

Answer 9

opportunity to gain an understanding of the clients cognitive and behavioural functioning

Question 10

Reasons for test failure?

Answer 10

Neuropsychological disorder
misunderstanding of test
drug and alcohol effects
learning difficulties
low education 
poor effort or malingering
other conditions

Question 11

How to assess premorbid functioning?

Answer 11

demographic and personal information (occupation school education etc)
Cognitive skills (vocabulary, general knowledge etc)
Specific measures (tests)

Question 12

Assessment of consciuossness?

Answer 12

Behavioural responsiveness to internal and external stimuli

Question 13

what is a feature when assessing for delirium?

Answer 13

Acute confusion state

diagnosed on predisposing features, and associated with increased medical complications

Question 14

The three markers for assessing orientation?

Answer 14

Personal orientation (personal semantics)
Place orientation (where you are in relation to other landmarks)
Time orientation (temporal facts; time)

Question 15

What assessments do you use for post traumatic amnesia?

Answer 15

Brief cognitive status exam
Folstein’s mini mental state exam
the westmead PTA scale (this is the best one)

Question 16

Tests used for assessing processing speed?

Answer 16

WAIS-4 coding
symbol digit modalities test
symbol search
grooved pegboard
trail making test
(these all rely on memory, search strategy, motor skillls etc)

Question 17

What do we usually assess for in attention?

Answer 17

digit span, sequencing, arithmetic

Question 18

What are the informal assessments for language skills to identify impairments?

Answer 18

Naming
Auditory comprehension
Reading and writing

Question 19

What are the formal assessments for language skills to identify impairments?

Answer 19

Boston naming test
token test
controlled oral word association test (COWAT)

Question 20

How to assess vision agnosia’s?

Answer 20

Copying tests
Matching tests
Object identification

Question 21

Why assess executive function? what is a the most common assessment of executive function?

Answer 21

people may be intellectually intact, but could be impaired in complex unstructured tasks.
stroop test