| Summary: | This Handbook provides directions to psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, and other health care professionals for making informed decisions about clinical memory assessment. The Handbook is intended to answer basic questions about memory diagnosis: What underlying theoretical and clinical issues are important in the selection of an assessment instrument or battery? What types of tests are available, and how have these tests been validated with available theoretical and clinical evidence? /// Although this Handbook concentrates on memory assessment of older adults, many of the issues are also applicable to clinical memory assessment in general. In the care and treatment of the elderly, abnormal decline in both memory and intellectual functioning is a major diagnostic landmark of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders, diseases that are commanding attention from health care professionals and public policymakers alike. Although standardized memory test batteries are available, there is no consensus among clinicians about the selection of tests to identify the loci of memory dysfunction and to evaluate treatment efficacy. These instrument selection issues are also common in the diagnosis of other clinical syndromes in which memory and cognitive functioning are compromised. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved).
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