A neuropsychological assessment is sometimes recommended for individuals who are struggling at school, in college, in the workplace or some other area of daily functioning. A neuropsychological assessment is designed to evaluate a person's relative strengths and difficulties in different domains of cognitive functioning, such as attention, memory, language, motor skills, problem solving and reasoning, which can give us information about why a person may find certain real-world behaviors and skills challenging.
During the neuropsychological evaluation, a person will be asked to complete many highly structured tasks, such as solving puzzles, answering word problems, and timed activities. Oftentimes, a person will also be asked to carry out tasks that measure academic performance, such as reading, writing skills, and math problems and they, or their parents will be interviewed and asked to fill out questionnaires about their behavior in different settings. For children, the evaluation also involves the examiner observing them in their classroom and talking with their teacher. All of this information is integrated to form an explanation of why a person is experiencing the difficulties they do, and to provide recommendations for how they may best be helped.