Non-Dominant Hand Performance on the Rey Complex Figure Test across Five Age Groups

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the ROCFT performance across five age groups when individuals used their non-dominant hand for the copy, immediate recall, and delayed recall conditions. In doing so, we aimed to establish an age-related set of nondominant-hand scores that could be used for determining the relative performance of individuals with left brain damage who are forced to use their nondominant hand for this test

Rubric scoring of a clinical test of executive functioning

Executive functions (EF) are complex abilities that allow one to successfully complete independent, deliberate, and novel goal-directed activities (Lezak, Howieson, & Loring, 2004). EF tests require solving problems with minimal direction from the examiner (Baddeley, 1992; Shallice & Burgess, 1991). Because EF skills tend to show up globally, Lezak et al. (2004) suggested clinicians will learn more about one’s EF abilities by observing how he or she goes about solving a problem than from a test score. If this is the case, a “rubric” score that took into consideration “how” a problem was solved may provide the clinician with better information for treatment planning than a test score, as long as it did not greatly affect test sensitivity or specificity. Sensitivity and specificity are important factors in determining the usefulness of EF tests. Sensitivity refers to the probability of identifying abnormal functioning in an impaired individual or “hit rate” of a test, whereas specificity reflects the probability of correctly identifying healthy individual with the test (Cartoni & Lincoln, 2005; Kiel & Kaszniak, 2002). Rubrics are useful scoring tools that divide tasks into component elements and provide a description of levels of performance for each element (Goodrich, 2005; Hanna & Smith, 1998). Rubrics have been widely used to assess student performance (Andrade, 2000; Falchikov, 1986; Goodrich, 1997), but have not been used to score EF tests. The aim of this study was to examine sensitivity and specificity for a clinical test of EF, the Rapid Assessment of Problem Solving test (RAPS) when scored with a rubric that allowed the examiner to describe the quality of performance using a standard that was developed from a large body of normative research. This differs from using the three traditional test scores from the RAPS that require time intensive calculations

Affective communication in normal and brain-damaged adults: An overview

In the past few decades an increasing number of investigators have examined how emotions are communicated through facial expression, speech prosody, and language in nonclinical and brain-damaged populations. Disorders of emotional communication (often referred to as affective processing disorders) are commonly associated with brain damage. These disorders include difficulty with expressing and perceiving emotional information, regulating emotions in communicative interactions, and demonstrating sensitivity to the emotional expressions of communicative partners. The purposes of this article are to: (1) describe normal affective communication; (2) review disorders in affective expression, perception, and regulation; (3) discuss the modality of facial expression and disorders of affective facial expression; and (4) present some informal tools for assessing affective processing