Prediction of driving ability after inconclusive neuropsychological investigation

Abstract

Objective: The aim of the present study was to investigate the predictive value of neuropsychological tests for on-road evaluation outcome after inconclusive assessment.

Methods and procedures: Thirty-five patients were assessed neurologically, neuropsychologically by traditional clinical tests and by on-road evaluation. Simple univariate tests, logistic regression and ROC-curve analysis were used to investigate the predictive power of different neuropsychological tests.

Main outcomes and results: Six measures from the California Computerized Assessment Package (CalCAP) and the Digit-Symbol test from Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale predicted the outcome of the on-road evaluation. A logistic regression analysis showed that a model with two variables from CalCAP and the Digit Symbol test predicted the results of the on-road driving evaluation with an overall accuracy of 84.8%.

Conclusions: The findings indicate that the outcome of on-road assessment is most related to cognitive skills such as attention and processing speed in combination with cognitive flexibility.

• Central nervous system diseases
• neuropsychological tests
• executive functions
• on-road evaluation
• automobile driving