PSYC3003 - Introduction to Clinical Psychology - Neuropsychology P1: Evaluations and general knowledge Flashcards
(148 cards)
What does a neuropsychologist study?
The brain -behaviour relationship.
What does a neuropsychologist ‘do’? (i.e work)
- Evaluation & diagnsosis (neuropsychological evalution, brain imaging techniques)
- Rehabilitiation
- Teaching
- Research
- Mediolegal (compensation litigation, diminished criminal responsibility)
What types of patients does a neuropsychologist deal with/see?
- Traumatic head injury
- Strokes
- Brain tumours
- Dementing conditions
- Learning diabilities
- Pervasive develomental disorders
- Attention deficit disorder
- Seizure disorder
- Effects of toxic chemical or chronic substance abuse
What is a neuropsychological evaluation?
Assessment of behaviour using standardised tests that are sensitive to breain-behaviour relationships.
Recommended when brain-based impairment is suspected.
As in all psychometrics, tests should be standardised, reliable and valid.
What does a neuropsychological evaluation involve and how long does it take?
Usually involves a number of tasks (a ‘battery’ of tests) which are non-invasive, flexible to to the situation (e.g table or bedside) and taileored to the individual patient’s needs based on the nature of the presenting problem.
They can take 6-8 hours of face-to-face time, this can be in a single session or spread over a series of appointments.
What is the purpose of neuropsychological evaluation?
- Profile patient strengths and weaknesses
- Differentiate between functional and organic disorder
- Document impact of brain dysfunction on a patients life
- Monitor progress in rehabilitation
- Disability determination for froensic/legal purposes.
What others pieces of patient imformation compliment neuropsychological evaluation?
(i.e integral approach)
- Patient backgroun (persnal history, description of illness, medical history, family history of brain disorder)
- Neurological examination
- Data from neuroimaging techniques (e.g., EEg, MRI, CT & PET
Briefly, what is ‘standardisation’ and ‘test norms’?
Standardisation: administer test and intepret results in the same way
Test-norms: data with which to compare the test result to, making it possible to determine the relative standing of an individual who has taken a test, thus, giving the results meaning.
What is reliability?
What are the 4 types of reliability?
Reliability: the stability/dependability/consistency of a test on repeated measures of the same person. Includes:
- Test-retest reliability - consistency between scores of an individual measured more than once.
- Inter-rater reliability - reliability between different people’s use of the measure to score the same individual
- Split-half reliability - the correlation between two halfs of a test
- Internal reliability/consistency - the degree to which items of a scale measure the same thing, also known as ‘cronbach’s alpha)
What is validity?
What are the 3 types of validity?
A test is valid when it measures what it purports to measure. The validity of a test is the meanifulness of specific inference made from the test scores.
An unreliable test cannot be valid, but a non-valid test can be reliable.
- Construct validity - does the test score measure the abstract psychological charactersitic or construct of interest (e.g memory or intelligence etc.)
- Content validity - do the items or tasks that make up your test make conceptual sense. Various items of teh test should correspond to the behavior te test is designed to measure or predict.
- Criterion validity - demonstrates that scores relate systematicaly to one or more outcome criteria. has two components:
- Concurrent validity - relates to outcomes now (important for testing capacities now)
- Predictive validity - relates to outcomes in the future (e.g predicting improvements or decline in recovary)
Neuropsychological testing focuses on what functional areas? (from the most basic to the most complex)
- Orientation
- Sensation/perception
- Attention
- Motor skills
- Language
- Visuospatial
- Memory
- Executive functioning (abstract reasoning/conceptualisation, emotional/psychological distress, activities of daily living)
What are the 4 lobes of the brain and where are they?
Where is the cerebellum, spinal cord and cerebrum?

See diagram!

Where is the hindbrain, midbrain and forebrain?

See diagram!

What is ‘orientation’ and why is it one of the first test administered?
what factors does it include?
Orientation is an awareness of oneself to the surrounding world.
It is a most basic level of functioning upon which other higher functions are built. It represents the capacity of the patient to actually undergo formal neuropsychological testing. (if they don’t know who they are, where they are or when they are…some further testing won’t yield much)
Three main types:
Orientation to person (who are you?)
Orientation to time (what date is it?)
Orientation to place (where are you?)
But also:
Arousal, degree of confusion, awareness of change
What part of the brain is (predominately) responsible for orientation?
Where is it in the brain?
Reticular formation.
The reticular formation is a group of nerve fibers located inside the brainstem.

What neuropsychologial items are used to test a persons ‘orientation’?
Assessment instrument: Galveston Orientation and Amnedai Test (GOAT) (or Glasgow Come Scale (GSC))
BOTH Assesses the extent and duration of confusion and amnesia after traumatic brain injury.
GOAT - Yields a score from 0-100 with a suggested cut-off of 75 or better indicating relatively intact orientation.
Also more generally:
- Orientation evaluation questions (what is your full name?, where do you live?, how old are you? where are you now? Who is the current president? who was the president before them?)
What is sensation?
What is perception?
What overal brain system does it use?
Perception = processing and intepretation of sensory input
Sensation = stimulation of sensory organs. (touch, vision, hearing, taste, smell)
Sensorymotor system (organised contralatterally) made up of many areas of the brain
Where are the two parts of the brain that deal with TOUCH sensation, what are they called and what do they do?
- Primary somatosensory cortex - basic awareness of touch - in the parietal lobee
- Secondary system - Intepretation - parietal lobe
The primary somatosensory cortex (SI) is across the central sulcus and behind the primary motor cortex configured to generally correspond with the arrangement of nearby motor cells related to specific body parts. The area includes gray matter along the central gyrus and its extension into the postcentral gyrus.
Goes across both brain hemispheres.

Where are the two parts of the brain that deal with VISION sensation, what are they called and what do they do?
- Primary visual cortex - the occipital lobe
- Secondary area of the visual cortex - two systems: ‘what’ system (faces, objects), ‘where’ system (where in space) - the occupital lobe
“The visual area known as V1, striate cortex, or (primary visual cortex, Brodmann area 17) is located on the calcarine sulcus deep within the inside folds of the occipital lobe.”

Where are the three ares of the brain that deal with HEARING sensation, what are they called and what do they do?
- Primary auditory cortex - frequency volume length
- Secondary area 1 - Wernickes area (Temporal lobe) - Understanding speech
- Secondary area 2 - Brocha’s area (Frontal lobe) - produce speech

What factors are assessed in sensation/perception?
- Recognition
- Familiarity of stimuli
- Relationship among features
- visual acuity
- Auditory
- Taste/smell
- Tactile/prioprioceptive
- Internal/environmental
- Awareness
What methods and instruments are used in the assessment of perception/intepretation?
Assessment instruments: Halstead-Reiten Neuropsychological Battery (visual, auditory & tactile modalities)
Also,
- Visual field examination: testing for interactions of the patients right and left hempispheres.
What is ‘Attention/Concentration’?
What areas of the brain are involved in attention/concentration?
Attending to the environment, maintaining attention.
- Sustained attention - paying attention to something over a prolonger period.
- Selective attention - Paying attention to more than one thing at a time.
Frontal lobe and Parietal Lobe
What methods and instruments are used to assess attention/concentration?
Instruments:
- Symbol Digit Modalities Test i.e., SDMT (see picture) - assesses complex scanning, visual tracking and sustained attention
- ‘d2 test’ - test of selection attention were one crosses out all the d’s with a “ above, below or both the letter. (BUT NOT any other combination) - also measures processing speed, rule compliance and quality of performance; allowing estimation of individual attention and concetration performance.
Methods:
- Maintaining attention - Easy tasks that require attention (count from 1-20 quickly, recite the alphabet, count in 3s till you reach 22)
- Attention span - attend to various verbal stimuli and then repeat them, becoming progressively more complex. e.g repeating numbers (589, 9275, 71632) and then also do it backwards.
- Sustained attention - tap on he table when you hear me say the number 4





