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: Traumatic Brain Injury Law Blog

American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology Files Amicus Brief in Support of the Use of Flexible Battery Approach in Neuropsychological Testing

By Bruce Stern

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Not long ago, a New Hampshire trial court barred the introduction of the Boston process testing approach in neuropsychological testing. There, the trial court also found that while this flexible approach in clinical neuropsychology was scientifically valid in the clinical setting, it was not valid in the forensic context and that data-based clinical judgments do not meet legal admissibility standards. The case is now before the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

Recently, the American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology (AACN) has filed an Amicus brief. The AACN is the membership organization of clinical neuropsychologists who are board certified under the auspices of the American Board of Professional Psychology. The purpose of the Amicus brief filed on their behalf was to address the issue of the scientific merits and acceptability of the flexible battery approach in clinical neuropsychology and the contention that the threshold for clinical judgments of clinical neuropsychologists is lesser than for forensic judgments, ie data-based clinical judgments do not meet legal admissibility standards.

AACN asserted that “Reliance on a flexible battery approach to neuropsychological testing is empirically proven as a mainstream practice” in that the “logic of the flexible battery approach is the same as in clinical medicine, namely, selection of different test groupings because of the many forms that brain damage can take.”

Rejecting the argument that flexible testing must be validated as a battery, AACN wrote “Test validity lies in individual tests, not test batteries as a whole.”

AACN points out that in four TCN/ACCN surveys conducted in 1989, 1994, 1999 and 2005 the vast majority of neuropsychologists utilize a flexible battery. The 2005 survey found that 76 % used a “flexible battery (variable but routine groups of tests for different types of patients such as head injury, alcoholism, elderly, etc), 18 % used a totally flexible approach (based upon the needs of an individual case, not uniform across patients), while only 7 % utilized a standardized battery (routine group of tests uniform across patients such as the Halstead-Reitan, Luria-Nebraska, Benton, or other standard battery).

For those who use a flexible approach and for those attorneys defending attacks against the validity of the flexible approach, will find this brief an excellent resource.

We will continue to watch the developments of this case closely.

Full post as published by Traumatic Brain Injury Law Blog on February 21, 2008 (boomark / email).