PSYC 3490 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Neuropsychological Assessment, Semantic Memory
15 Nov 2016
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Document Summary
Neuropsychological assessment involves gathering information about a client"s brain functioning from a series of standardized cognitive tests. Intelligence test provides an assessment of an individual"s overall cognitive status along a set of standardized dimensions. Primary mental abilities test (pmat) not currently used; it assesses the seven abilities of verbal meaning, word fluency (generating words), number (arithmetic), spatial relations, memory, perceptual speed, and general reasoning. Scores on measures of executive functioning appear to show steady declines in later adulthood. On tests of verbal fluency, older adults show a greater tendency to perseverate, meaning that they continue to produce the same words: perseveration is less evident in people with larger vocabularies. Aerobic exercise training improves performance on tests of mental flexibility, attention, and inhibitory control: videogame playing also benefits executive functioning in such areas as task- switching, reasoning, and trail-making. This type of training increases the brain volume of areas involved in videogame play.
