title: An untapped resource: treatment as a tool for revealing the nature of cognitive processes.
abstract: This paper focuses on the role of treatment in cognitive neuropsychological research, arguing that treatment for cognitive impairments should be viewed as a powerful methodology for developing, evaluating, and extending cognitive theories. We suggest that the key aim of cognitive neuropsychology should be characterized as the use of data from the investigation  and treatment  of individuals with cognitive disorders to develop, evaluate, and extend theories of normal cognition. To support this assertion, this paper discusses examples of how treatment studies have informed theory. The major methodological tool is generalization logic, both generalization across items and generalization across tasks. However, an alternative is to use case series methodology to test predicted correlations between particular cognitive skills and response to treatment. These methods enable explicit testing of a theory or discrimination between theories, focusing on the nature of cognitive representations, the architecture of the cognitive system, and the acquisition of cognitive skills.
authors: ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. lyndsey.nickels@mq.edu.au
authors: Lyndsey
authors: L
authors: Nickels
authors: Saskia
authors: S
authors: Kohnen
authors: Britta
authors: B
authors: Biedermann
mesh_terms: D015984:Causality; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy*; D015928:Cognitive Behavioral Therapy; D019336:Cognitive Science; D006801:Humans; D009484:Neuropsychology; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D012106:Research; D012107:Research Design; D016896:Treatment Outcome