Neuropsychological testing has a unique and important role in (a) delineating the behavioral consequences of brain lesions and (b) predicting the likely impact of such ability deficits on everyday functioning. Here we review the available studies that relate neuropsychological test scores to aspects of self-care and independent living, academic achievement, and vocational functioning. The results are generally positive, but the clinical value of these studies is limited by the fact that most used only intelligence tests or screening tests with subject groups that are not very representative of the patient population referred for neuropsychological testing. Methodological considerations for future research are discussed, in addition to the potential advantages of clinical over actuarial prediction in this area. To illustrate this type of clinical interpretation and suggest hypotheses for future research, it is described how results on comprehensive neuropsychological testing can be considered in relation to questions about patients' everyday functioning.

Numerous studies have demonstrated a significant depression in performance IQ (PIQ) in Turner Syndrome (TS) females, but the neuropsychological interpretation of this finding remains unclear. The present study addressed the following questions regarding the neuropsychological phenotype in TS: Are TS women neuropsychologically impaired? Is the impairment lateralized and How consistent is the neuropsychological phenotype across TS individuals? Unlike previous studies, the present study utilized both normal and brain damaged female controls. All subjects were given an extended Halstead-Reitan neuropsychological battery. The TS females were significantly worse than normals but not significantly different from brain damaged females in their overall level of neuropsychological functioning. However, their impairment was not lateralized. Their pattern of lateralizing findings was similar to that found in the Diffuse and Normal groups, but significantly different from either the right or left unilateral lesion groups. Fairly consistent deficits were found on tests of visuospatial skills and long term memory, but there was considerable variability in all the other test findings among TS individuals. The results are discussed in relation to the recent findings (Inglis and Lawson, 1981) that verbal-performance IQ discrepancies may be unreliable indicators of lateralized cerebral dysfunction in females. Hence the depressed PIQ in TS appears not to indicate predominantly right hemisphere dysfunction and may not even indicate a consistent underlying neuropsychological phenotype.

Previous research has found that verbal associative fluency tasks are sensitive to the presence of cerebral lesions and more sensitive to frontal lobe and left hemisphere lesions than to other focal lesions. The present study investigated the diagnostic utility of the Thurstone Word Fluency Test (TWFT), a test of written verbal fluency, in detecting and localizing cerebral lesions. Using results from 203 brain-damaged and 134 normal subjects, we found that TWFT performance is affected by cerebral damage generally. At the same time, it is more impaired by frontal than by nonfrontal, by left than by right hemisphere, and by left frontal than by right frontal lesions. This test does not discriminate focal frontal from diffuse lesions. Stepwise discriminant function analyses indicated that the TWFT adds to the Halstead-Reitan Battery in discriminating focal frontal from nonfrontal lesions, but not in discriminating left hemisphere from right hemisphere lesions. Only markedly impaired TWFT performances had lateralizing significance.

An important clinical question is whether the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and the Category Test, two tests of abstraction and concept formation, are interchangeable. This study attempted to answer this question by correlating results on the two tests and comparing their diagnostic accuracy in large groups of brain‐damaged patients (N = 207) and normal controls (N = 150). It was concluded that these tests are not clinically interchangeable and that both can make important contributions to a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment.

Cialdini has proposed a reciprocal concessions explanation of the door-in-the-face technique for inducing compliance. We wish to propose an alternative explanation, that this technique increases compliance because it induces concern about self-presentation. A field experiment was designed to determine whether the manipulations used in previous door-in-the-face studies led to assumptions of a negative self-presentation. Fifty male university students were presented with either a moderately large request for help (similar to those used in the door-in-the-face studies) or an extremely large request. After refusing the request subjects were asked to complete a questionnaire. Responses to this questionnaire indicated that subjects believed an observer of their refusal would rate them as significantly less helpful, less friendly, and less concerned after they refused the moderately large as opposed to the extremely large request. These results were predicted by our selfpresentation explanation of the door-in-the-face technique.