Search for examples of neuropsychological tests and you get a list of instrument names. Trail Making. Rey Complex Figure. Wisconsin Card Sorting. Boston Naming.
The names are real. They are also close to useless to you, because knowing that a test is called Trail Making tells you nothing about what it is looking at or why someone chose it for you.
Here they are organized the way they are actually chosen: by the thinking skill each one measures.
What Are Some Examples of Neuropsychological Tests?
Neuropsychological tests are standardized tasks that each isolate one thinking skill, and they are grouped into six broad domains: memory, attention and processing speed, language, visuospatial ability, executive function, and mood.
Most are unglamorous. You listen to a list of words and repeat them back. You copy a drawing. You connect numbered circles as fast as you can. You name pictures of objects. The AACN describes them as “mostly paper and pencil tasks and some may be on the computer,” and that is accurate.
The six domains, and a plain example of each:
- Memory: hearing a short story or word list, then recalling it immediately and again after a delay
- Attention and processing speed: connecting scattered numbers in order against a stopwatch
- Language: naming line drawings of objects, or generating as many words as you can in a category
- Visuospatial ability: copying a complex geometric figure, then drawing it again from memory
- Executive function: sorting cards by a rule that changes without warning
- Mood and personality: written questionnaires about depression, anxiety, and daily functioning
The delayed-recall structure in that first example is doing more work than it looks like. If you can recall a list right away but not twenty minutes later, that points somewhere different than if you could not hold onto it in the first place.
Why a List of Test Names Will Not Tell You Much
The list format that dominates this topic invites two mistakes.
The first is treating the names as a syllabus. There is no fixed battery. Two people with memory complaints can be given substantially different sets of measures, because the referral question differs. A post-stroke evaluation/capacity evaluation and an adult attention evaluation share some components and diverge on many others.
The second is worse: people find the names, look up sample items, and practice. That damages the results. These measures work because your performance is compared against how people of your age and educational background perform when they encounter the task fresh. Rehearsing a figure you will be asked to copy from memory does not make you look better, it makes the measurement meaningless. You then get a report that describes a version of you that does not exist, which is a waste of everyone’s time including yours.
The domain is the useful unit. If you want to walk into your appointment informed, learn what the six domains are and which ones your referral question concerns. That is knowledge you can use without contaminating anything.
Examples By Domain, and What Each One Reveals
| Domain | What a task looks like | What the result actually tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Verbal memory | Recalling a word list or short story, immediately and after a delay | Whether information is being stored, or stored and then not retrieved |
| Visual memory | Reproducing a geometric design from memory | Whether the memory problem is material-specific or general |
| Attention | Repeating digit sequences forward and backward; sustained vigilance tasks | Whether attention explains a memory complaint |
| Processing speed | Timed number or symbol tasks | Whether slowing is the primary change, common after injury and in some medical conditions |
| Language | Confrontation naming; word generation by letter and by category | Whether word-finding trouble is access, vocabulary, or something broader |
| Visuospatial | Copying figures; assembling block patterns; line orientation | Spatial processing, neglect, and construction ability |
| Executive function | Rule-shifting card sorts; tasks requiring inhibition; planning tasks | Judgment, flexibility, and self-monitoring, the skills that govern independence |
| Motor and sensory | Grip strength, finger tapping, tactile tasks | Lateralized findings that help localize |
| Effort and validity | Embedded measures throughout the battery | Whether the results represent your genuine performance |
| Mood | Standardized depression and anxiety questionnaires | Whether mood is producing or amplifying the cognitive complaints |
No patient receives all of these. Selection depends on the referral question, your history, and often on what earlier tasks in the same appointment revealed.
Two rows in that table deserve more than a line.
Effort and validity measures are the part nobody mentions in the popular lists, and they are always present in a properly constructed battery. They are not there because anyone suspects you. They are there because a report is only defensible if the person interpreting it can say the scores reflect genuine performance. Fatigue, pain, poor sleep, and medication all affect effort in ways that are not deliberate, and a good evaluator accounts for them rather than assuming.
Mood questionnaires get skipped by patients who came for a memory question and see no point in answering questions about sadness. They are frequently the most consequential. Depression can produce memory complaints that are convincing to the person having them, and the treatment path for that is entirely different from the treatment path for a degenerative process. Answering those pages honestly is one of the most useful things you can do in the appointment.
How a Neuropsychologist Chooses Which Tests to Use
The battery is assembled, not pulled off a shelf.
It starts from the referral question. “Is this normal aging or early decline” produces one set. “Can this patient safely manage their own finances” produces another. “Does this adult have an attention disorder that was never identified” produces a third. Then history narrows it further: for example, education, primary language, hand dominance, vision and hearing, prior head injuries, and the medications you take today.
The battery also changes during the appointment. If early memory measures come back intact but attention looks weak, the useful next step is more attention measurement, not more memory measurement. That kind of adjustment is a large part of what training in this specialty buys you, and it is the main reason a fixed off-the-shelf battery is a weaker instrument than a selected one.
COGNITIVE EVALUATION
Wondering which of these you would actually be given?
The battery is chosen for your referral question, not off a template. Dr. Baldassarre selects it herself and explains what each part is looking at.
Which Tests Are Not Part of This
Some of what people expect to encounter is not part of a neuropsychological evaluation at all.
No brain imaging. Riverside uses interactive psychometric measures, not scans or EEG. Imaging shows structure. These tasks show function, and the two answer different questions. A scan can be unremarkable while an evaluation finds a clear deficit, and the reverse happens too.
No blood work, no needles, no electrodes. Nothing invasive.
Not an online cognitive quiz. Free web screeners are not normed the way clinical measures are, are not administered under standardized conditions, and cannot be interpreted against your history. They are not a substitute and a result from one should not reassure or alarm you.
Not a singular IQ test, the purpose is different: an evaluation is looking for a pattern of relative strengths and weaknesses, not a single summary number.
Can You Prepare For or Practice These Tests?
You cannot prepare for these in the way you would prepare for an exam.
That is worth stating clearly because the instinct is so reasonable. You are anxious, the appointment feels consequential, and preparing is what people do about anxiety. But these measures depend on encountering the task without prior exposure. Practicing a figure or a word list produces a score that does not describe how you function on an ordinary day, and the whole point of the report is to describe how you function on an ordinary day.
What genuinely helps: sleep, your usual medications, your glasses and hearing aids, a list of your medications, prior records, and someone who knows you well. The Riverside Psychology FAQ covers the preparation details.
One more thing, since it comes up constantly: people ask during the appointment how they did on a task they just finished. It is a completely understandable question and it usually cannot be answered in the moment, because a single raw performance means nothing until it is scored against normative data and read alongside everything else. That is not evasion. It is the same reason a single lab value does not get interpreted at the blood draw.
If you found yourself wanting to practice, that instinct tells you something worth mentioning at the appointment. Anxiety about performance is itself relevant clinical information, and saying so out loud is more useful than preparing in silence.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many tests are in a neuropsychological evaluation?
There is no fixed number. A focused screening might use a handful of measures; a full evaluation can involve dozens of individual tasks across six or more domains, spread over several hours.
Are neuropsychological tests done on a computer?
Some are, most are not. The AACN describes the tasks as mostly paper and pencil, with some on a computer. You will also handle physical materials such as blocks and puzzles for certain measures, and a portion of the appointment is spoken.
What do the scores mean?
Your raw performance is converted into a comparison against normative data for people of similar age and background, so a score describes where you fall relative to that group rather than whether you passed. What matters far more than any single number is the pattern across domains. Strong verbal memory with weak visual memory means something different from weakness in both. Intact memory with impaired attention points somewhere different again. This is why a report is written as an interpretation rather than a scorecard, and why your neuropsychologist explains it to you in a conversation instead of handing you a page of numbers. Education, primary language, sensory ability, mood, and effort all get factored into that interpretation. For a closer look at the percentiles and clinical terms, see our walkthrough on reading your evaluation report.
Can I see the actual test materials beforehand?
No, and the reason is protective rather than secretive. These measures are copyrighted and their validity depends on you not having seen them. Published test items lose their usefulness for everyone who is evaluated afterward, which is why clinicians and publishers guard them.
