Abstract
A variety of personality, behavioral, cognitive, social, and emotional changes typically follow traumatic brain injury. Standardized psychological tests are of limited value in assessing these individuals and may even be misleading. While neuropsychological testing is effective in discriminating the performance of brain damaged and non-brain damaged patients, the etiology of brain dysfunction must be inferred from the pattern of behavioral impairments and comparison to characteristic neurobehavioral patterns associated with specific types of neurological disorders. Strict reliance on test data can be misleading when testing patients with prominent orbital frontal lobe injury. The conditions of testing may also inadequately mask many of the patient's impairments and may lack sufficient "ecological validity." Frequently psychologists fail to take a chronological history of the injury, the patient, or interview the family or significant others. Many reports focus on the patient's deficits and presumed site of injury rather than discuss the patient's strengths, coping strategies or compensatory behaviors.