This paper briefly reviews the history and purposes of neuropsychological assessment, as well as advancements in this area, and discusses the development of neuropsychological tests, using examples developed by the author and his colleagues to measure different aspects of human memory. These include the Shum Visual Learning Test, the Australian Retrograde Memory Test, the Comprehensive Assessment of Prospective Memory and the Virtual Reality Prospective Memory Task. The intended uses and psychometric properties of these tests, as well as examples of their use in research and clinical settings, will also be discussed. The paper will conclude with recommendations and advice on the development of neuropsychological tests based on the author's own experience.

Autobiographical memory involves the recall of personal facts (semantic memory) and re-experiencing of specific personal events (episodic memory). Although impairments in autobiographical memory have been found in adults with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and attributed to compromised hippocampal integrity, it is not yet known whether this occurs in children with TLE. In the current study, 21 children with TLE and 24 healthy controls of comparable age, sex, and socioeconomic status were administered the Children's Autobiographical Interview. Compared to controls, children with TLE recalled fewer episodic details, but only when no retrieval prompts were provided. There was no difference between the groups for semantic autobiographic details. Interestingly, the number of episodic details recalled increased significantly from 6 to 16 years of age in healthy control children, but not in children with TLE. Exploratory analyses revealed that, within the group of children with TLE, epilepsy factors, including presence or absence of structural hippocampal abnormalities, did not relate to the richness of episodic recall. Our results provide first evidence of autobiographical episodic memory deficits in children with TLE. (JINS, 2013, 19, 1–12)

Person identification represents a unique category of semantic knowledge that is commonly impaired in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but has received relatively little investigation in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). The current study examined the retrieval of semantic knowledge for famous names from three time epochs (recent, remote, and enduring) in two participant groups: 23 amnestic MCI (aMCI) patients and 23 healthy elderly controls. The aMCI group was less accurate and produced less semantic knowledge than controls for famous names. Names from the enduring period were recognized faster than both recent and remote names in both groups, and remote names were recognized more quickly than recent names. Episodic memory performance was correlated with greater semantic knowledge particularly for recent names. We suggest that the anterograde memory deficits in the aMCI group interferes with learning of recent famous names and as a result produces difficulties with updating and integrating new semantic information with previously stored information. The implications of these findings for characterizing semantic memory deficits in MCI are discussed. (JINS, 2009, 15, 9–18.)

Recognition and remote memory for odors, faces, and symbols were assessed in patients with pathologically confirmed Lewy body variant of Alzheimer's disease (LBV), patients with pathologically confirmed Alzheimer's disease (AD), and healthy elderly controls. On recognition memory tasks, LBV and AD patients showed significantly lower discriminability (d′) than controls, particularly for olfactory stimuli. However no significant differences were found in the bias measure (c). When participants rated familiarity (a proposed measure of remote memory) of olfactory stimuli LBV and AD patients reported significantly lower familiarity than controls. Familiarity ratings were significantly lower in LBV patients than in AD patients for olfactory, but not for visual stimuli. Consistent with prior reports, the LBV patients showed significantly poorer odor thresholds than AD patients. The results suggest that recognition memory for olfactory stimuli is impaired in LBV and AD. However, patients with LBV are more impaired than patients with AD on tasks requiring remote memory for olfactory but not visual stimuli. The findings suggest that odor memory tasks may be useful in the assessment of LBV and AD. (JINS, 2004, 10, 835–842.)

Alcoholic Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) is marked by remote memory impairment together with characteristic profound anterograde memory deficits. Despite previous studies of memory processes in KS, questions remain regarding the nature and severity of these impairments and identification of brain systems that underlie these different memory impairments. This study examined remote and anterograde memory function in 5 KS patients in comparison with 8 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 24 normal control subjects (NC). In addition, relationships between memory performance and regional brain volumes were examined in the KS group. Overall, the KS group showed severe impairment on both remote and anterograde memory measures, performing at the level of the AD group on most measures. Differences were observed on the pattern of temporal gradient for verbal recognition, with KS exhibiting a more steeply graded rate of decline over the most recent period examined. Severity of the remote memory deficit in KS was not associated with severity of anterograde memory deficit. Examination of brain structure–function relationships in the KS subjects revealed that photo naming of remote historical information was related to posterior cortical white matter volumes but not hippocampal volumes; sequencing was related to prefrontal but not hippocampal volumes. By contrast, a measure of anterograde memory for nonverbal visual material showed a relationship to hippocampal but not regional cortical white matter volumes. This set of dissociations, which parallels that observed in our earlier study of AD, is now documented in KS and provides further evidence that these separate cortical and limbic brain systems are principal neural substrates of the remote and anterograde memory and sequencing deficits in KS. (JINS, 2004, 10, 427–441.)

When required to locate places on outline maps, males consistently perform more accurately than females. This sex difference in geographical knowledge has been observed in samples throughout the United States, in all age ranges examined from the second to the 9th decade of life and in samples differing in average education level from high school to postgraduate degrees. Both males and females appear to acquire geographical knowledge during surface travel through the environment. The information acquired during everyday travel is apparently integrated into topographic representations that comprise a cognitive map. This process is less efficient in females probably because they attend to and remember more about landmarks and less about distance and directional cues than do males. To examine the importance of driving experience on the ability to locate places on an outline map of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, adolescents who were too young to drive and older persons with varying amounts of experience traveling in the metropolitan area were studied. In the present study the magnitude of the sex difference in accuracy, though not the absolute level of performance, was similar in groups of people too young to drive and in younger and older drivers. Hence, the sex difference in geographical knowledge cannot be the product of differences in driving that may exist between males and females. (JINS, 2002, 8, 804–810.)

Memory deficits are frequently observed in schizophrenia but their intrinsic characteristics have not been clarified. We studied remote memory in a group of 20 schizophrenics and 20 healthy age and education matched controls using a newly devised public event questionnaire (PEQ) that employs a free recall, progressive cueing and recognition protocol and requires dating of events. Results indicate that patients with chronic schizophrenia perform significantly more poorly on the PEQ than a group of age and education matched controls both in terms of content and dating of events. The number of events recalled does not improve with progressive cuing or recognition. No distinctive pattern was observed in their temporal gradient. There was no significant difference in content scores for pre- and post-onset events in the schizophrenics. These findings indicate that remote memory deficits in chronic schizophrenics arise from deficient encoding rather than from a retrieval deficit secondary to executive dysfunction. (JINS, 2002, 8, 861–866.)

This study examined the relationships between regional cortical and hippocampal brain volumes and components of remote memory (recall, recognition, sequencing, and photo naming of presidential candidates) in 13 individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Recognition and sequencing of remote memory for public figures were associated with regional cortical volumes. Specifically, lower recognition and sequencing scores were associated with smaller parietal–occipital cortical volumes; poorer sequencing was also associated with smaller prefrontal cortical volumes. By contrast, poorer anterograde but not remote memory scores were correlated with smaller hippocampal volumes. Within the constraints of the brain regions measured, these findings highlight the importance of the posterior cortical areas for selective remote memory processes and provide support for the dissociation between cortically mediated remote memory and hippocampally mediated anterograde memory. (JINS, 2001, 7, 384–390.)