Introduction: Toward a Cognitive Neuropsychology

Abstract

A special issue on neuropsychology has to respond to three principal imperatives: it must present a sufficiently large and diversified vision of the field and of the questions currently at issue; it must indicate, together with the theoretical and experimental contributions, the changes in clinical practice on the diagnostic level that result from them; finally, it must situate the recent developments in therapeutic practice. However, the space available obliges us not only to give priority to contributions related to experimental research, but also among them to choose the theoretical developments that appear to us to be the most significant. In any event, it is impossible to have a “neutral”, “objective”, or “balanced” presentation of the discipline, and the majority of the texts here betray our sensitivity to the emergence of even closer contacts between neuropsychological and cognitive psychology. This deliberate choice requests some justification, which we will try to provide in this brief introduction.