Neurobehavioral Assessment

        Neurobehavioral assessment resources include the full range of neuropsychological assessments, and operant performance testing using equipment and paradigms appropriate for use with subjects of any intellectual level, including profound mental retardation, and any level of behavior disorder, including children with autism and post-traumatic brain injury.   These services will be provided by the Departments of Behavioral Psychology and Neuropsychology at the Kennedy Krieger Institute.

·        Neuropsychological Testing, includes achievement tests, behavior checklists, measures of personality, developmental status, intelligence, executive function, language, visual spatial skills, and memory.  Skilled psychologists are available to assess a broad range of subjects:  children who are cognitively very limited; those less severely impaired; learning disabled children and adults; and control groups.

·        Operant Performance Measures: Direct observation of behavior, conducted in areas that simulate naturalistic settings, is accomplished by the use of desk top and lap top computers with accompanying customized software that allows for the simultaneous recording of up to twenty behaviors for real time analysis, including conditional probability calculations. 

·        Customized Assessments: Conduct of specialized, or customized, testing of behavioral characteristics, performances and learning repertoires is available to the NBRU.  In addition to both MAC and IBM desktop and lap top computers, resources include touch screens, scanners, voice synthesizers, and input devices appropriate for use with children and adolescents with disabilities.  There are also video cameras, recorders, and monitors for direct observation and data coding, computer peripherals for customizing video displays for stimulus presentation, and commercially available or custom designed software applications to implement computerized standard learning and performance tasks.

·        Behavior Training:  Staff of the NBRU will train research subjects to cooperate with protocols, which is especially important with pediatric subjects and subjects with behavior and compliance problems.  Subjects are trained to cooperate with medication regimens and cognitive testing batteries. 

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