The Boston Process Approach To Neuropsychological Assessment

Abstract

Abstract The Boston Process Approach is based on a desire to understand the qualitative nature of behavior assessed by clinical psychometric instruments, a desire to reconcile descriptive richness with reliability and quantitative evidence of validity, and a desire to relate the behavior assessed to the conceptual framework of experimental neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience (see Delis et al., 1990). In the past twenty years, the practice of clinical neuropsychology has progressed rapidly. Initially, neuropsychological assessment techniques were known only to a few selftrained clinicians or consisted of test batteries designed with the modest goal of determining the presence of the clinical diagnosis of “organicity.” These formerly esoteric practices have grown into a widely respected specialty of clinical assessment based on a growing body of research (Lezak, 1995). To its credit, the American tradition of clinical neuropsychology is supported by a bulwark of empirical clinical research directly relating test scores to central nervous system (CNS) damage. It is now possible for an experienced clinician to use a series of test scores to reliably determine the presence or absence of brain’ damage in nonpsychiatric patients and somewhat less reliably to localize and establish the etiology of this damage.

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