Neuropsychological disorders of children

Abstract

There is one fundamental axiom that governs the practice of neuropsy-chological assessment of children. That is that they are not little adults. Every aspect of the evaluation process must be changed to adapt to this fact. A special set of adapted techniques must be used to get background history and clarify the referral question; different strategies are needed to build rapport and main¬tain cooperation throughout the evaluation; the interpretation of assessment results is modulated by principles of dynamic localization (Vygotsky, 1960) and neuroplasticity (Stein, Brailowsky, & Will, 1995), and the reporting and com¬munication of results is invariably a multiparty process quite different from a typical doctor-patient consultation (Ryan, Hammond, & Beers, 1998). There are a variety of reasons why a child might be referred to a neuro-psychologist for an assessment. These include examining the impact of congenital neurodevelopmental disorders, determining the effects of acquired injuries and tracking their recovery, or simply to better understand current learning and behavior issues and to understand how to best remediate them or mitigate their deleterious influences (Baron, 2004). This is particularly true for children who are experiencing academic problems in school or behavioral problems due to ADHD, learning disorders, or other conditions that place them neuropsychologically at risk. Neuropsychological assessments are requested by parents, teachers, counselors, and medical professionals when a child is noted to be developmentally off track in terms of cognitive, sensory, or motor development, and typically include but go beyond the normal rating scale assessment by others for social and behavioral problems, and the more comprehensive individually administered psychoeducational evaluation conducted for circumscribed academic problems. © 2009 Springer New York.