By Dott.ssa Barbara Colacchia

Behavior may be conceptualized in terms of three functional systems:

1. cognition, which is the information-handling aspect of behaviour
   • receptive function involve the abilities to select, acquire, classify and integrate information
   • memory and learning refer to information storage and retrival
   • thinking concerns the mental reorganization of information
   • expressive functions are the means through which information is communicated or acted upon
2. emotionality, which concerns feelings and motivation
3. executive functions, which have to do with how behaviour is expressed

Components of each of these three sets of functions are as integral to every bit of behaviour as are length and breadth and height to the shape of any object

Tests and assessment techniques         

These are tests and assessments techniques that are particulary well suited for clinical neuropsycological examination.

An effort has been made to classify the tests according to yhe major functional activities they elict and for many of them this was possible.

Not all of these tests are well standardized, and thus they do not satisfy all of the criteria recommended by The American Psychological Association (1985). Many of them were included because their clinical value seems to outweigh their statistical weakness. 

General

Orientation

• place
• time
  1. temporal orientation test
  2. temporal disorientation questionarie
  3. time estimation
  4. discrimination of recency

• body orientation
  1. personal orientation test
  2. finger localization
  3. tactile finger recognignition
• directional (right-left) orientation

1.      parts identification

2.      orientation test (RLOT)

3.      laterality discrimination test

4.      standardized road-map test of direction sense

• space
  1. distance estimations
  2. mental transformations in space
  3. mental re-orientation
  4. space thinking (flags)
  5. spatial orientation memory test
  6. spatial dydascalias
  7. topographical orientation
  8. tophographical localization
  9. test of geographic orientation
  10. fargo map test (FMT-S)
  11. extrapersonal orientation test

Attention, concentration and traking

• vigilance

1.      attention capacity test

2.      cancellation tests

3.      digit vigilance test

4.      perceptural  speed (PS)

5.      visual search and attention test

• short term storage capacity

1.      digit span

2.      point digit span

3.      letter span

4.      forward span: visual

5.      knox cube test (KCT)

6.      sentence repetition

7.      silly sentences

8.      reversal serial order

9.      mental control

10.  sequential operation series (SOS)

11.  alphabet reversed

12.  stroop test

Complex attention

1.      digit symbol

2.      trail making test (TMT)

3.      color trails

4.      trails

 Sensitivity 

Perception

• Visual perception

1.      test of visual neglect

2.      bell test

3.      verbal and not verbal tasks

4.      letter and symbol cancellation tasks

5.      star cancellation

6.      line bisection test (LB)

7.      meaningful pictures

8.      picture scanning

9.      reading tasks for testing visual inattention

10.  indented paragraph reading test (IPRT)

11.  behavioural inattention test (BIT)

• Visual scanning

1.      visual search

2.      counting dots

• Color perception

1.      testing for accuracy of color perception

2.      Farnsworth panel D-15 test

3.      color vision screening inventory

4.      discrimination between color agnosia and color anomia

• Visual recogniction

1.      angulation

2.      recogniction of pictured objects

3.      perceptural speed (identical forms)

4.      test of face recogniction

5.      visual form discrimination

·            visual organization

1.      test involving incomplete visual stimuli

2.      gestalt completion test

3.      closure speed

4.      golling figures

5.      visual object and space perception test

6.      hopper visual organization test (HVOT)

7.      Minnesota paper form board test

8.      rorsharch technique

• visual interference
  1. figure-ground tests
  2. overlapping figures test
  3. overlapping figures formats
  4. southern California figure-ground visual perception test

Auditory perception

• auditory acuity
• auditory discrimination
  1. wepman’s auditory discrimination test
  2. phoeme discrimination
  3. speech sounds perception test
  4. auditory reception
  5. voice recognition

• non verbal auditory perception
  1. seashore rhythm test

Tactile perception

• Tactile inattention

1.      face-hand test (FHT)

2.      single and double simultaneous stimulation test (SDSS) also called face-hand

3.      quality extinction test (QET)

• Tactile recognition and discrimination tests

1.      stereognosis

2.      skin writing

3.      finger number-writing perception

Olfaction

 Memory

• verbal memory

1.      syllables

2.      words

3.      nominative data

4.      California verbal learning test (CVLT)

5.      Hopkins verbal learning test

6.      Selective reminding (SR)

7.      Paried-associate word learning tests

8.      Associate learning (PAL)

9.      Expanded paried associate test (EPAT)

• Sentence recall

1.      working memory span

• Story recall

2.      logical memory (LM-O, LM-R)

3.      babcock story recall test

4.      California discourse memory test (CDMT)

Non verbal auditory memory

1.      Seashore tonal memory test

Visual recogniction

2.      continuos recogniction memory test (CRMT)

3.      continuos visual memory test (CVMT)

4.      recurring figure test

5.      figural memory

6.      visual recogniction test (metric figures)

7.      visual reproduction

8.      complex figure test recall administration

9.      Benton visual retention test (BVRT)

10.  memory for designs test (MFD)

Visual learning

1.      Rey’s visual design learning tests (RVDLT)

2.      biber figure learning test (BFLT)

3.      7/24 spatial recall test (SRT)

4.      visual spatial learning test (VSLT)

5.      form sequence learning (FSL)

Tactile memory

1.      tactual performance test (TPT)

2.      tactile pattern recognition

Remote memory

1.      remote memory battery (RMB)

2.      president test

It is important to remember that all this tests are often for administrating test, for scoring and compiling data through computers in neuropsychological assessments.

Many of these tests were controlled by both simulators and control subjects and gave very intresting results that were published in many books and reviews.