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The hypothesis testing approach to neuropsychological assessment (HTA) is a flexible approach to testing. It enables the clinician to provide tentative explanations for a patient’s impaired capacities or functions in a manner that will enable the explanations to be tested and, thereby, supported or refuted and refined (Lezak et al. 2012).
Current Knowledge
The primary advantage of the HTA is that it “enables the examiner to generate multistage, serial hypotheses for identifying subtle or discrete dysfunctions or to make fine diagnostic or etiologic discriminations” (Lezak et al. 2012, p. 112). The HTA requires the clinician to examine the component functions that might be involved in or that contribute to the phenomenon in question. Based on the patient’s performance, a component function may be determined to contribute or not, thus enabling refinement of the original hypothesis. Refining one’s theory of function and dysfunction in this way facilitates a more...
Further Readings
Bowden, S. C. (2007). Hypothesis-testing in Australian neuropsychology. Australian Psychologist, 30, 35–38.
Goldberg, E. (2001). The executive brain: Frontal lobes and the civilized mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hale, J. B., & Fiorello, C. A. (2004). School neuropsychology: A practitioner’s handbook. New York: Guilford Publications.
Lezak, M. D., Howieson, D. B., Bigler, E., et al. (2012). Neuropsychological assessment (5th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Rozenblatt, S. (2017). Hypothesis Testing Approach to Evaluation. In: Kreutzer, J., DeLuca, J., Caplan, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56782-2_191-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56782-2_191-2
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