Neuropsychological Response Essay

The presence of a third party observer (TPO) in the examine room during neuropsychological assessments is an issue that has led to worry contemporary neuropsychologists (McCaffrey, Lynch, & Yantz, 2005). In some cases, conditions arise when third party in addition to the testing professional and subjects—such as legal delegate, parents, and test overseer— request to observe neuropsychological assessment. In these situations, there are numbers of ethical issues for neuropsychologists, particularly problems regarding security of test, standardized test administration plans, normative data applicability, and most importantly, concerns relating to the impact of a TPO on performance of neuropsychological test (Howe & McCaffrey, 2010; Otto & Krauss,
Most recently, the Attentional Control Theory (ACT) (Eysenck et al., 2007) has created considerable research interest, and many of its main hypotheses has obtained empirical support (Berggren & Derakshan, 2013; Derakshan & Eysenck, 2009; Eysenck & Derakshan, 2011). According to ACT, anxiety consumes resources within the limited capacity working memory system. Based on Baddeley’s (1986) working memory model, ACT assumed that under high cognitive load processing performance in the tasks that involved inhibition and shifting functions of the central executive adversely affected by anxiety ( Miyake & Friedman, 2012). ACT also makes predictions as to how these deficits will manifest by drawing an important distinction between performance effectiveness and processing efficiency. Effectiveness refers to the quality of task performance indexed by standard behavioral measures (generally, response accuracy). In contrast, efficiency refers to the effort or resources spent in task performance (generally, reaction time and spent mental effort), with efficiency decreasing as more resources are invested to attain a given performance level (Eysenck et al.,