Preparing for Neuropsychology Assessments

What is a Neuropsychology Assessment?

Psychologists from the Department of Psychology at Singapore General Hospital offer neuropsychological assessments to evaluate your current thinking abilities, including memory, attention/concentration, speed of thinking, language, and problem solving. These assessments involve talking with you and people who know you well, to understand your current thinking abilities and functioning. You will also participate in paper-and-pencil tasks and/or computer-based activities.

Purpose of Neuropsychology Assessments

Neuropsychological assessments use objective measures to determine the extent of your current thinking skills. It takes into consideration your medical and mental health conditions as well as developmental and social situations. These evaluations aim to understand your thinking concerns to help with treatment planning. It can also be used to assess strengths and weaknesses in your thinking abilities, as well as monitor changes in your cognition over time.

Checklist: Preparing for the Appointment

Patients are encouraged to arrive 15 minutes before the appointment to allow time for registration.
Hearing and/or visual aids: should patients require hearing aids and/or spectacles, kindly bring them along to the assessment.
Time required: the assessment involves around 2 hours of face-to-face contact. There are no painful or invasive procedures involved. No neuroimaging is involved.
Available informant: a close family member or caregiver (someone who is able to provide information about the patient’s daily functioning) will be interviewed for approximately 15-20 minutes to better understand their symptoms (e.g., nature of symptoms, when they started, and how they have progressed over time).