LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After completing this seminar, participants will be able to describe the historical development and scientific validation of the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Test Battery. They will be able to explain its usefulness in the understanding of their patients’ brain-related function; they will be able to apply this knowledge to improve their understanding of the nature and degree of their patients’ difficulties in daily and occupational function.
They will be able to demonstrate the correct administration and scoring procedures for each of the subtests within the battery. They will be able to identify which HRB test procedures are most sensitive to brain impairment, which are particularly useful in differentiating chronic from progressive neurological disorders, and which are most useful in predicting rehabilitation success.
They will be able to demonstrate the correct data plotting procedure in order to organize and summarize the test results from the full HRB test battery. They will be able to describe how to organize their test data according to the cerebral hemisphere involved. They will be able to explain the principles of brain organization that lead to interpretive decisions about the significance of motor and sensory-perceptual data (hemisphere-specific) as compared to data from measures of higher cognitive (generalized, non-lateralized) function. They will be able to explain the importance of non-impaired test results in the construction of an overall pattern of neuropsychological function for their patients.
Seminar participants will be able to recognize important patterns of test results that indicate, for example, significant brain-related disorders, mild brain-related disorders, lateralized brain-related disorders (e.g., stroke, tumor), or no disorder (e.g., normal function or normal variation). After reviewing case examples and plotting test data, the attendees will be able to describe the patterns of test results expected in traumatic brain injury, stroke, and Alzheimer’s disease.