The specialised psychometric assessment tools used by neuropsychologists allow for accurate assessment of a range of cognitive functions including attention, learning, memory, and processing speed. Specific components of each of those functions are examined in detail. For example:
- When assessing attention, neuropsychological assessments examine different types of attention, such as:
- sustained attention – how long you can concentrate on one thing
- divided attention – concentrating on more than one thing at once
- attentional switching – the ability to switch your attention from one thing to another
- When assessing verbal learning and memory, neuropsychological assessments examine different types of memory, such as:
- Short-term memory
- Longer-term memory
- Rate of learning
- Encoding of information
They might ask you to remember different types of information (such as a list of words, pairs of words, or short stories), some of the information might be repeated, some might need to be recalled after a short delay and some after a longer delay, and prompts may be used to help recall some information. This is done to help determine why memory problems might be occurring; is it due to difficulty concentrating, difficulty organising information as you take it in, difficulty storing information, or difficulty recalling information after a delay?
