A comparison of NES2 and traditional neuropsychological tests in a neurologic patient sample

The Neurobehavioral Evaluation System (NES), a computer-assisted battery of behavioral tests, has been widely used to detect central nervous system dysfunction in occupational and environmental settings and has recently been adapted for testing of neurological patients. The purpose of the present study was to assess the relationship between NES tasks and the traditional neuropsychological tests from which many of the NES tests were developed. For this purpose, comparisons were made between scores on NES tests and traditional neuropsychological tests designed to measure functioning in the same cognitive domains in a sample of patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD). As has been found in prior studies with normal subjects, correlations between traditional and NES2 tests varied from low to moderate. Correlations tended to be low when the modality of stimulus presentation or responses was different in the NES tests from the traditional tasks (e.g., verbal rather than visual) or when divergent and highly specific cognitive functions were being measured by the tests.