We met Michael in the Thinking Processes and Behaviour Core competency. Michael (52) works as a bank clerk in a busy, open office setting. He is divorced and has a daughter Jane (20). She does not live with him but normally visits her father every day after work. Michael enjoys going to concerts.
Michael has recently been in hospital having had a Right PACS. He was thrombolysed within 4.5 hours of symptom onset and was discharged home having spent just 3 days in hospital after having thrombectomy within 6 hours.
Jane has some concerns about how her father is managing at home. She has noticed when she visits that her father is unkempt and the house is untidy with things lying around (towels, clothes, unopened mail). This is a big change in her father as he is normally very house proud. On a few occasions he has left food to burn on the cooker. When she asks him about going back to work he does not appear to have made any contact with his line manager about returning to work. Jane is also worrying about her father going back to driving/his ability to drive.
When Ray attempted a task similar to this he made numerous mistakes, he struggled to hold the information in mind and manipulate it.
To perform well on tasks such as this requires good working memory. That is the ability to hold information in mind while we perform some operation on it. It is involved in everyday tasks such as mental arithmetic and holding a phone number in mind while you dial it.
Planning and organisation is involved in many tasks and these skills are particularly important when tasks are novel and/or complex.
Sometimes neuropsychologists ask subjects to copy detailed and complex figures. In the absence of visual or perceptual problems, how an individual undertakes the task can reveal difficulties with planning and organisation.
View the simulation below showing Ray’s complex shape task.
You will notice that the ‘good’ copy starts with the main elements of the figure and then fine tunes the details. This sort of approach often leads to a well organised cohesive copy.
In contrast Ray’s copy starts with a relatively small section, shows no real logic and is quite piecemeal; as a result it is more difficult to achieve a cohesive integrated whole. This sort of approach often indicates difficulties with planning and organisation.
Ray was assessed by the neuropsychologist. Click on the links on the following pages to find out how Ray performed on some of the assessment tasks and to have a go at some yourself. At the end of each task there is an explanation of what processes the assessment is trying to tap into.
Please note that these ‘assessments’ are for illustration purposes only, they have not been validated and under no circumstances should they be attempted with patients.
We met Michael in the Thinking Processes and Behaviour Core competency. Michael (52) works as a bank clerk in a busy, open office setting. He is divorced and has a daughter Jane (20). She does not live with him but normally visits her father every day after work. Michael enjoys going to concerts. 
