14

Practitioners of neuropsychology and associated disciplines quite often wish to highlight any changes in a patient’s performance over time. Identical tests are therefore administered 2, 3 or even more times over a fairly long period of time, in order to closely monitor such changes. This article adds to the statistical tools needed for such subtle undertakings. An analysis is proposed that compares the scores of an individual case with a normative sample when these scores are observed k times (i.e. more than 2 times). This is commonly referred to as pre-test, posttest 1, posttest 2, posttest 3 and so on. In the event of a statistically significant change in performance, specific post hoc analyses are used to identify the scores that differ. This test does not require any specific normative sample size and can be used when the normative data is available as ‘mean and standard deviation’ or in percentile form. Aside from a use in the analysis of temporal evolution of performance, a possible use of this test for analyzing performance profiles is also described. A spreadsheet is provided to enable readers to use the procedures presented in this article.