Abstract
The prior chapter demonstrated that referring only to a level of performance criteria tells us little, if anything, about any given person’s clinical status. Assuming all cognitive functions can be understood within the symmetry of a statistical standard normal distribution runs a notably increased risk of making interpretive errors. Tests designed to assess the integrity of medial temporal lobe system functions provide a salient example of this issue. An assessment of anterograde amnesia, defined as the inability to learn new factual, semantic information, immediately comes to mind. When attempting to assess an individual’s ability to learn and retain, comparison to an external normative group standard might even become totally irrelevant. Certain inferential conclusions can be diagnostically misleading. Consider the following test score data from the California Verbal Learning Test, 2nd Edition (CVLT II):
“Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.”
Henry Ford
“Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”
Booker T. Washington
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Koziol, L.F., Beljan, P., Bree, K., Mather, J., Barker, L. (2016). Beyond the Bell-Shaped Curve. In: Large-Scale Brain Systems and Neuropsychological Testing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28222-0_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28222-0_4
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