LSP Neuropsychological Assessment 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which neuropsychological test is specifically designed to assess frontal lobe executive functions through card sorting based on color, shape, and number?
- Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (Correct answer)
- Trail Making Test
- Stroop Color-Word Test
- Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure
Correct answer: Wisconsin Card Sorting Test
The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) requires flexible thinking and set-shifting, making it a classic measure of prefrontal executive function.
Question 2: A patient scores in the impaired range on the Digit Span Backward but within normal limits on Digit Span Forward. This pattern most likely indicates a deficit in:
- Working memory (Correct answer)
- Long-term declarative memory
- Procedural learning
- Sensory registration
Correct answer: Working memory
Backward digit span requires active manipulation of information in working memory, whereas forward span primarily reflects passive auditory attention and registration.
Question 3: In base rate interpretation, a clinician calculates how common a low score is in the normative population before diagnosing impairment. This practice primarily addresses which threat to validity?
- Overcalling deficits due to chance variability (Correct answer)
- Floor effects on standardized measures
- Test-retest reliability inflation
- Practice effects from repeated testing
Correct answer: Overcalling deficits due to chance variability
Base rate analysis guards against false-positive diagnoses by accounting for the statistical likelihood that any given low score occurs in healthy individuals.
Question 4: The Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery includes the Category Test primarily to measure:
- Abstract reasoning and hypothesis testing (Correct answer)
- Verbal fluency and word retrieval
- Motor speed and coordination
- Sustained visual attention
Correct answer: Abstract reasoning and hypothesis testing
The Category Test presents visual stimuli requiring the examinee to identify an underlying principle, tapping abstract concept formation and adaptive learning.
Question 5: A 55-year-old patient with suspected early Alzheimer's disease performs poorly on delayed recall but benefits significantly from semantic category cues. This profile is most consistent with:
- Frontal-subcortical retrieval failure rather than hippocampal encoding deficit (Correct answer)
- Pure hippocampal encoding failure
- Korsakoff syndrome with confabulation
- Semantic dementia with category-specific loss
Correct answer: Frontal-subcortical retrieval failure rather than hippocampal encoding deficit
Robust cued recall suggests the information was encoded but is poorly retrieved, pointing to executive-retrieval dysfunction rather than the encoding failure typical of hippocampal Alzheimer's pathology.
Question 6: Which of the following best describes the concept of 'ecological validity' in neuropsychological assessment?
- The degree to which test performance predicts real-world functioning (Correct answer)
- The extent to which a test is standardized on a representative normative sample
- The reliability of a test when administered in natural settings
- The ability of a test to detect lesion lateralization
Correct answer: The degree to which test performance predicts real-world functioning
Ecological validity refers to how well neuropsychological test results generalize to and predict a patient's everyday adaptive functioning.
Question 7: The Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT/FAS) primarily assesses which cognitive domain?
- Phonemic verbal fluency (Correct answer)
- Semantic memory organization
- Auditory working memory
- Visual-spatial processing
Correct answer: Phonemic verbal fluency
The COWAT requires generating words beginning with specified letters under time pressure, making it a measure of phonemic fluency and frontal-executive word retrieval.
LSP Neuropsychological Assessment 2
Which neuropsychological test is specifically designed to assess frontal lobe executive functions through card sorting based on color, shape, and number?