Vital to the core mission of the Moody Neurorehabilitation Institute is the conducting of research designed to enhance understanding of and improve treatment strategies for brain injury. The result of this research finds its home in publication in a wide range of top professional journals and chapter after chapter in books relied upon by the traumatic brain injury treatment community. Recently, TLC staff neuropsychologists Drs. Dennis Zgaljardic and Matthew Lambert along with staff occupational therapist Rebekah Miller published a paper on the reliability and validity of a newer test to determine naming deficits. Difficulty with the naming of objects (for example: saying “fork” when you mean “pencil”), known as anomia, is not uncommon with patients who have brain injuries (particularly if the injury is to the left hemisphere of the brain). However since most tests of cognitive abilities are developed using members of the healthy population as a testing sample, it is unclear to what degree these tests might be appropriate when applied to other populations (such as patients with brain injuries). Identifying which tests should or should not be used with a brain injured population is an extremely important component of treatment. Using a test that is not appropriate for an individual with a brain injury can lead to misdiagnosis and based on that misdiagnosis, incorrect treatment.
The paper, titled Naming Test of the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery: Reliability and Validity in a Sample of Patients with Acquired Brain Injury, was published this past December in the Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology. In the study, the researchers compared the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery (NAB) Naming test with various other neuropsychological tests. The Neuropsychological Assessment Battery is a relatively new group of tests designed to measure a wide range of cognitive skills including memory, attention and of course naming. For the NAB Naming test to be found appropriate for use in a brain injured population, the researchers first looked to see if the test scores correlated with scores on other similar tests that have been shown to be valid with such a population. For instance, a person who scores highly on the NAB Naming test should similarly do well on another naming test. The researchers found this to be true. Next, the researchers looked to see if the NAB Naming test scores were not correlated to unrelated tests. For example, a person’s score on the NAB Naming test should have nothing to do with his or her score on an attention task. This also was found to be true. Thus, the NAB Naming test was found to be an appropriate test to use with individuals who have brain injuries.
Below is a link to the paper abstract:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23714104
Learn about how Moody Neuro can help with neuropsychology and counseling, speech and language disorders, physical therapy, outpatient rehabilitation assistance, community integration programs, and occupational therapy.