Release of Protected Test Information Under Protective Order: Viable Solution or Illusory Safeguard? An Interorganizational† Position Paper.

Objective: To critically examine the assumption that protective orders are adequately protective of sensitive psychological/neuropsychological test information. Attorneys at times claim that to adequately cross-examine neuropsychological experts, they require direct access to protected test information, rather than having test data analyzed by retained neuropsychological experts. As a compromise, judges sometimes order that protected test information be released to attorneys under a protective order.

Attorney demands for protected psychological test information: Is access necessary for cross examination or does it lead to misinformation? An interorganizational* position paper.

Some attorneys claim that to adequately cross examine neuropsychological experts, they require direct access to protected test information, rather than having test data analyzed by retained neuropsychological experts. The objective of this paper is to critically examine whether direct access to protected test materials by attorneys is indeed necessary, appropriate, and useful to the trier-of-fact. Examples are provided of the types of nonscientific misinformation that occur when attorneys, who lack adequate training in testing, attempt to independently interpret neurocognitive/psychological test data.

Neuropsychologist Experts and Civil Capacity Evaluations: Representative Cases.

Clinical neuropsychologists accept more forensic referrals now and spend more time in forensic consulting than ever before. Recent surveys show weekly hours devoted to forensic consulting increased 97% in the past decade. During the same time period, the number of board certified neuropsychologists more than doubled.

Neuropsychologist experts and neurolaw: cases, controversies, and admissibility challenges.

Clinical neuropsychologists engage increasingly in forensic consulting activities because such expert opinions are generally relevant, reliable and helpful in resolving certain legal claims, especially those related to traumatic brain injury. Consequently, practitioners of law, medicine and psychology would benefit from understanding the nature of neuropsychological evidence, the standards for its admissibility, and its expanding role in neurolaw. This article reviews important evidentiary rules regulating relevance, preliminary questions, and expert testimony, while tracing federal key court decisions and progeny.

Protecting raw data and psychological tests from wrongful disclosure: a primer on the law and other persuasive strategies.

Psychologists must advocate for more stringent legal protection of psychological test materials because using standardized tests is the most distinguishing and exclusive feature of psychological evaluation practice. With the rapid growth in forensic consulting, unrestrained discovery of raw data and psychological test materials during litigation erodes the reliability and validity of the test procedures. Dissemination of test materials reduces the interpretive value of the tests and promotes cheating, turning our best methods into junk science in the courtroom.

Using path analysis to understand executive function organization in preschool children.

There continues to be no consensus definition of executive functions. One way to understand different executive function components is to study abilities at their emergence, that is, early in development, and use advanced statistical methods to understand the interrelations among executive processes. However, to fully determine the constructs of interest, these methods often require complete data on a large battery of tasks, which are difficult to obtain with young children.