Clinical Comparison of Two Confrontation Naming Measures in Spanish-Speaking People with Epilepsy.

OBJECTIVE: Research on the lateralizing value of neuropsychological tests is limited among Latino people with epilepsy (PWE). This study aims to evaluate the utility of two confrontation naming measures in laterality determination. METHOD: Data were collected from 71 Latino PWE who completed the Vocabulario Sobre Dibujos (VSD) and the Pontón-Satz Modified Boston Naming Test (MBNT). Raw and standardized scores were examined to determine diagnostic accuracy for predicting left hemisphere (LH) epilepsy for the full sample and using a sample-specific median split of educational attainment. RESULTS: The MBNT demonstrated adequate classification accuracy (65.7%, 77.1%) as did the VSD (54.3%, 74.3%) for predicting LH seizure laterality using raw and standardized scores, respectively. For participants with ≥ 9 years of education (HEdu), receiver operator characteristic curve analyses showed a raw/percentile cutoff of ≤ 26/≤ 5th on the VSD, yielding 53%-58% sensitivity/87%-83% specificity. A raw score cutoff of ≤ 17 on MBNT produced 47% sensitivity/78% specificity for HEdu participants. CONCLUSIONS: The VSD was found to have greater flexibility in determining cutoff scores using either raw or standardized scores for predicting seizure laterality. This study provides interpretation guidance, emphasizing education as a pertinent variable, to optimize lateralization accuracy for Latino PWE.

Assessment of impaired self-awareness by cognitive domain after traumatic brain injury.

PURPOSE: To examine self-awareness in chronic traumatic brain injury (TBI) by cognitive domain, compare domain-specific self-awareness to global impaired self-awareness, and evaluate change in self-appraisal of cognitive ability from before to after neuropsychological testing. METHOD: Secondary analysis of a cross-sectional cohort of 59 participants with chronic TBI. We grouped participants as underestimators, fair estimators, and overestimators of their memory and executive functioning. We then compared these groups by global self-awareness measures, other clinical measures, and pre- to-posttest change in self-appraisal of cognitive performance. RESULTS: Analyses revealed no significant differences in global self-awareness measures or depression between fair or underestimators and overestimators in Memory or Executive Function Domains. Only 12.50% of participants in the Memory Composite Domain and 6.89% of participants in the Executive Function Composite Domain changed their pre- to postneuropsychological test self-appraisal of cognitive ability. CONCLUSION: This study revealed most participants did not change their self-appraisal in response to completing neuropsychological testing alone. In conjunction with our findings that suggest global self-awareness measures may not adequately capture domain-specific self-awareness deficits in chronic TBI, this study provides support for development of targeted self-awareness assessment tools and the need for structured feedback, rather than naturalistic feedback alone, to improve self-awareness in chronic TBI. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).