Clinical acumen but psychometric naivete in neuropsychological assessment of educational disorders.

Many advances in clinical neuropsychology have resulted from the excellent clinical, observational skills developed in the field. In the development of assessment tools for clinical practice, advances in the field have not paralleled advances in applied psychometrics, especially in the assessment of educationally handicapped children. The Boder Test of Reading Spelling Patterns is examined as a detailed example of outstanding clinical acumen leading to a valuable heuristic that failed when translated into a practical assessment tool, primarily due to a lack of attention to the psychometric aspects of the scale. Implications of the failure to apply modern psychometric standards to test development in clinical neuropsychology are discussed.