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30 WORKSHOP INFORMATION Course 36 No Kidding: Validity Testing in the Assessment of School-Aged Children and Adolescents Allyson G. Harrison, Ph.D., C. Psych. Associate Professor, Queen's University One critical issue faced by assessors when evaluating school-aged individuals is determining the credibility of test performance and symptom complaints. This question is becoming more important given the secondary gains that currently exist for individuals diagnosed with a neurological disorder who require academic accommodations or treatment with stimulant medication. Subjective clinical evaluation of test-taking effort is flawed, thus requiring use of objective, standardized measures when assessing school-aged individuals. This workshop will acquaint participants with the topic of Performance Validity Tests (PVTs) and Symptom Validity Tests (SVTs) as they relate to the assessment of school-aged children and adolescents. Areas of focus will include: professional guidelines/position statements; reasons why clinicians must not rely on subjective impression alone when determining effort and validity of obtained test scores; and research on use of validity tests in this population, including which tests have the best empirical support for which age ranges and why some are insensitive to feigning or low effort in specific situations. The talk will conclude with illustrative case examples in which PVT/SVT failure had a direct impact on case conceptualization and how this was taken into account in improving diagnostic decisions and treatment recommendations. As a result of this presentation, the participant will be able to: 1. List and describe the performance and symptom validity measures validated for use with children and adolescents. 2. Describe the difficulty evaluating the credibility of a patient's performance when focused only on scores obtained on traditional psychometric tests. 3. Explain at least three reasons why a pediatric client might perform poorly on measures of test-taking effort. 4. Assess the appropriateness of existing Performance and/ or Symptom Validity Tests for specific referral questions. 11:00 am - 12:00 pm Keynote Address (1 CE) Course 37 Where Do We Go From Here: The Future of Neuropsychology Ronald M. Ruff, Ph.D. Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of California San Francisco In my 1999 NAN Presidential address nearly 20 years ago, I challenged my colleagues to change their primary focus on neuropsychological localization; since the development of Computer Tomography neuropsychologists have no longer been needed for the localization of brain tumors. Instead, I advised my colleagues that our patients would benefit far more if we focused on comprehensive assessment of all cognitive constructs, including verbal and visuospatial assessments of attention, memory, learning and problem solving. Secondly, I emphasized that we as clinicians needed to not only quantify both the weaknesses and strengths of each patient's cognitive abilities, but that the time had come for us to develop treatments for cognitive remediation. In this talk, the progress that has been made in these areas over the past two decades will be briefly summarized. However, the primary focus of my 2018 follow-up talk will be to insist that neuropsychologists expand their assessment to capture – similar to the cognitive domains - the patients' emotional residuals in a more refined manner. Thus, our neuropsychological discipline needs to move forward to focus on both diagnosing and treating our patient's cognitive and emotional residuals. To achieve an understanding of the emotional changes, administering 1 or 2 psychiatric tests (e.g., MMPI, Millon) is insufficient since these do not capture the losses following a brain injury. Thus, new tests must be developed to capture pre- and post-morbid emotional functioning that yields the necessary comparisons. Finally, I will address specific ways in which psychotherapy needs to be modified for patients with acquired brain damage – because our psychotherapeutic treatment methods developed for psychiatric illnesses are insufficient and at times even contraindicated. As a result of this presentation, the participant will be able to: 1. Identify the full range of cognitive functions that need to be assessed in patients with acquired brain damage. 2. Discuss the weaknesses that remain in our cognitive assessments. 3. Identify limitations of using tests designed to capture psychiatric/emotional problems to assess individuals with significant brain damage. 4. Explain why the benefits of psychotherapy can vary in patients with different severity levels of cognitive impairment. 5. Develop efficacious treatments for the cognitive and emotional residuals of patients with varying presentations.