Deficit Measurement

Definition

Deficit measurement is the measurement of impairment when an examinee’s performance is significantly below an actual or estimated previous level of functioning.

Current Knowledge

In neuropsychology, deficit measurement can be achieved by assessing cognitive functioning as separate domains or as a composite of domains. For instance, cognitive deficits in a particular ability domain, such as list-learning ability, can be measured via the administration of a list-learning task during which the examinee must recall a list of words both immediately and after a specified time delay. If the examinee performs poorly, the score on this subtest provides information about deficits associated with the examinee’s list-learning ability. In the case of using composite scores, several subtests are combined to generate a composite score that represents performance in a general domain of functioning, such as auditory memory. This could include several separate aspects of functioning, such as...