William S MacAllister

• Ph.D., ABPP-CN
• Medical Professional at Alberta Health Services

Executive skills are critical cognitive skills for everyday functioning in children; accurate measurement using validated tools is thus important. The purpose of this study was to examine concurrent validity between the MEMRY Executive/Working Memory scale and the BRIEF2. Participants included a large pediatric clinical sample who completed parent...

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is one of the most common congenital birth defects. As surgical and interventional techniques have improved, the mortality has been greatly reduced and the focus has shifted to quality of life and long-term outcomes. The impact of CHD on development and cognition is becoming increasingly recognized. However, more rese...

Objective Word finding or “naming” difficulty is a symptom of multiple neurological disorders; therefore, naming assessment is an integral component of neuropsychological evaluation. Prior work has found weaker second-language naming in healthy proficient bilingual youth than monolingual youth, and similar findings have been shown in adults with ep...

Abbreviated memory batteries play a role in some clinical and research assessments, but their validity and accuracy need to be well supported. The purpose of this study was to examine the accuracy of the ChAMP Screening Index for detecting memory impairment. The sample included N = 804 youths (ages 5-21 years) with medical and neurological diagnose...

Objective: Epilepsy is one of the most common reasons for referral for a pediatric neuropsychological evaluation due its high prevalence in childhood and our well-established clinical role in tertiary care settings. Emerging evidence indicates that racial and ethnic minority populations experience increased epilepsy burden compared with White peer...

Objective It is essential to interpret performance validity tests (PVTs) that are well-established and have strong psychometrics. This study evaluated the Child and Adolescent Memory Profile (ChAMP) Validity Indicator (VI) using a pediatric sample with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Method A cross-sectional sample of N = 110 youth (mean age = 15.1...

Objective: The Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration (VMI) is a commonly used test of visuoconstruction. While many assume this task has lateralizing value in focal epilepsy, this remains untested. The present study investigated the utility of the VMI in children and adolescents with focal, well-lateralized epilepsy. Method...

Background/objectives: Despite advances in the treatment of sickle cell disease (SCD), cerebrovascular and cognitive insults can have lifelong consequences. Hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) is an established curative therapy, and recent studies have demonstrated efficacy with reduced toxicity nonmyeloablative (NMA) regimens, but little is...

Given the high rates of learning challenges in children with medical conditions, efficient and reliable screening methods are crucial. This study examined whether parent report of daily learning and memory predicts academic achievement in youth. Parents of 213 youth (aged 6-18) with varied medical diagnoses completed the Multidimensional Everyday M...

Importance: During pregnancy in women with epilepsy, lower blood concentrations of antiseizure medications can have adverse clinical consequences. Objective: To characterize pregnancy-associated concentration changes for several antiseizure medications among women with epilepsy. Design, setting, and participants: Enrollment in this prospective...

Motor skill deficits are common in epilepsy. The Grooved Pegboard Test (GPT) is the most commonly used fine motor task and is included in the NIH Common Data Elements Battery for the assessment of epilepsy. However, there are limited data on its utility in children and adolescents. The present study investigated the effectiveness of this task in ch...

Background/Objectives. Despite advances in the treatment of sickle cell disease (SCD), cerebrovascular and cognitive consequences can be lifelong. Hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) is an established curative therapy and recent studies have demonstrated efficacy with reduced toxicity nonmyeloblative (NMA) regimens, but little is known about n...

Importance The neurodevelopmental risks of fetal exposure are uncertain for many antiseizure medications (ASMs). Objective To compare children at 2 years of age who were born to women with epilepsy (WWE) vs healthy women and assess the association of maximum ASM exposure in the third trimester and subsequent cognitive abilities among children of W...

Though it is wellknown that psychiatric concerns are common in children with epilepsy, factors predicting such problems are not well understood. The present investigation studied rates of parent-reported psychological concerns in clinically referred children with epilepsy. Further, it investigated differences in psychological distress across epilep...

Objective Neuropsychologists labor over scoring the Rey Complex Figure Test (RCFT), a measure of visuospatial functioning and nonverbal memory. Compelling arguments suggest that pathognomonic signs of the RCFT are observable to the “naked eye.” Standard scoring systems are insensitive to lateralizing temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and alternative “qu...

Objective Prior research on intellectual development in children with congenital heart disease (CHD) yielded inconsistent findings. No study has yet examined the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Fifth Edition (WISC-V). Given its revised factor structure, it is unknown if the WISC-V performs similarly to prior versions in children with CHD....

Objective As new measures of memory become available, clinicians may be cautious to adopt them without evidence supporting their validity. The present study assesses the convergent and divergent validity of the Child and Adolescent Memory Profile (ChAMP), with the California Verbal Learning Test Children’s (CVLT-C) and the Rey Complex Figure Test (...

Objective The Grooved Pegboard Test (GPT) is among the most commonly used fine motor tasks, though there is limited data on its basic psychometric properties in children and adolescents with medical conditions. The purpose of this study was to establish test reliability for the GPT within this group. Method Participants (N = 44; 22 males, 22 femal...

Objective The WISC-V can now be administered in paper format or digitally. Though most subtests are comparable, Processing Speed Index (PSI) subtests, Coding and Symbol Search required complete redesign for digital presentation. We initially collected data to assess comparability of paper versus digital PSI tasks for future use. However, in March o...

The impact of gene-related early infancy onset epilepsies in cognitive development can be potentially devastating. Here we report two cases of SCN8A-related epilepsy that highlight the neuropsychological heterogeneity seen with differing de-novo pathogenic variants. Case 1 is a 6-year-old right-handed girl who presented with SCN8A-developmental and...

Growing recognition and concerns of non-credible performance in pediatric populations have led clinicians to investigate the utility of performance and symptom validity tests (PVT/SVTs) among children and adolescents. Yet current research has indicated that a minority of clinicians routinely utilize a free-standing PVT in pediatric neuropsychologic...

Pediatric neuropsychologists are increasingly recognizing the importance of performance validity testing during evaluations. The use of such measures to detect insufficient effort is of particular importance in pediatric epilepsy evaluations, where test results are often used to guide surgical decisions and failure to detect poor task engagement ca...

Objective: The Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) is a brief neuropsychological battery that has been validated in the assessment of dementia and other clinical populations. The current study examines the utility of the RBANS in patients with epilepsy. Methods: Ninety-eight patients with epilepsy completed...

Objective Two cases of SCN8A-related epilepsy (a sodium-channelopathy) are presented. SCN8A-related epilepsy with encephalopathy (SCN8A-REE), the most common form, is typically characterized by refractory seizures, developmental delays, and intellectual disability (ID) but recently discovered variants have shown broadly normal cognition. Current ca...

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-negative temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) may be a distinct syndrome from TLE with mesial temporal sclerosis (TLE-MTS). Imaging and neuropsychological features of TLE-MTS are well-known; yet, these features are only beginning to be described in MRI-negative TLE. This study examined whether a quantitative measure of cort...

Computerized cognitive batteries, such as CNS Vital Signs (CNSVS), can provide valuable information in clinical and research settings. However, psychometric properties, especially in children and adolescents, remain relatively understudied. The aim of this study was to investigate the factor structure of CNSVS in children and adolescents with neuro...

Despite its popularity in the neuropsychological evaluation of children, the utility of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children – Fifth Edition (WISC-V) has not yet been investigated in children with epilepsy. Eighty clinically referred children and adolescents with epilepsy were administered the WISC-V as part of a comprehensive assessment an...

A 2016 survey of pediatric neuropsychologists found that 92% of clinicians reported use of “at least one” performance validity test (PVT) in each assessment. The present investigation sought to verify documented PVT use among clinicians by review of actual reports. A convenience sample of pediatric neuropsychological reports of children ages 6–17 w...

Objective: With this prospective, observational study, we aimed to determine whether noninvasive language tasks, developed specifically for children, could reliably identify the hemisphere of seizure onset in pediatric epilepsy. Methods: Seventy-eight children with unilateral epilepsy (44 left), aged 6-15 years (mean age = 11.8, SD = 2.6), compl...

The material-specific model for memory impairment predicts that verbal memory deficits are seen with left temporal seizures, and visual memory deficits are seen with right temporal seizures (Henkin et al., 2005). In pediatric epilepsy, seizure pathology has not always yielded the expected material-specific memory profiles. This study used the Wide...

Background Neuropsychological assessment must include determinants of validity. This study sought to develop an embedded performance validity indicator for the Child and Adolescent Memory Profile (ChAMP) Lists verbal memory subtest. Methods Children and adolescents (N = 103; mean age = 14.6 years, SD = 2.4, range = 8–18) who were on average 25 week...

Background: Development of an embedded performance validity test (PVT) is desired for visual memory tests. The goal of this study was to derive an embedded PVT for the Child and Adolescent Memory Profile (ChAMP) Objects visual memory subtest in youth with mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI). Methods: Children and adolescents (N = 91; mean age = 1...

Cambridge Core - Neuropsychology - Neuropsychological Conditions Across the Lifespan - edited by Jacobus Donders

Determining the validity of obtained data is an inherent part of a neuropsychological assessment. The purpose of this study was investigate the failure rate of the Memory Validity Profile (MVP) in a large clinical sample of children and adolescents with neurological diagnoses. Data were obtained from 261 consecutive patients (mean age = 12.0, SD =...

Epilepsy is a prevalent condition characterized by variations in its clinical presentation, etiology, and amenability to treatment. Through history, neuropsychologists have played a significant role in performing research studies on changes in language, memory, and executive functioning in patients with epilepsy, including those undergoing surgical...

Objective: Assessment of performance validity is a necessary component of any neuropsychological evaluation. Prior research has shown that cutoff scores of ≤6 or ≤7 on Reliable Digit Span (RDS) can detect suboptimal effort across numerous adult clinical populations; however, these scores have not been validated for that purpose in an adult epileps...

Assessment of naming in children has been hampered by the use of tests that were developed, either to assess naming in adults or to assess related verbal functions in children. We developed comparable visual naming test (VNT) and auditory description naming (ANT) specifically for children. We collected normative data, not only for accuracy, typical...

Executive functioning deficits are prominent in children with epilepsy. Although instruments, such as the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF), are useful in detecting executive dysfunction in school-age children with epilepsy, little data are available for younger children. The present study evaluates the ability of the Behavior...

Executive function deficits are common in children and adolescents with epilepsy. Though the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST) is often considered the “gold standard” for executive function assessment, its sensitivity—particularly in the case of the 64-card version (WCST-64)—is insufficiently established in pediatric samples, including children an...

Cognitive impairment is common in children and adolescents with epilepsy. Though there is increasing recognition that even children with more benign epilepsy syndromes may show cognitive loss over time, this is particularly true in children with severe epilepsies, termed the epileptic encephalopathies. The current article discusses general cognitio...

In adults, left temporal lobe pathology is typically associated with verbal memory deficits, whereas right temporal lobe pathology is thought to produce visual memory deficits in right-handed individuals. However, in children and adolescents with temporal lobe pathology, conclusions regarding material specificity of memory deficits remain unclear....

A 19-year-old man with cortical dysplasia and intractable focal seizures underwent a right temporal lobectomy. A hypothalamic hamartoma was subsequently recognized, and he then underwent MRI-guided stereotactic laser ablation. Unfortunately, he sustained damage to the bilateral medial mammillary bodies and suffered significant memory loss. We revie...

The male:female ratio in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) averages greater than 4:1 while the male:female ratio of ASD with epilepsy averages less than 3:1. This indicates an elevated risk of epilepsy in females with ASD; yet, it is unknown whether phenotypic features of epilepsy and ASD differ between males and females with this comorbidity. The goa...

Children with epilepsy have a range of cognitive ability, from profound global impairment to superior skills. Nevertheless, cognitive and behavioral difficulties have a higherbase rate in children with epilepsy than in healthy children, and in some children, cognitive difficulties may predate first seizure (Fastenau et al., 2009). For this reason,...

Children and adolescents with epilepsy are known to demonstrate executive function deficits. Despite prior work that has shown that cognitive estimation tasks are sensitive to executive dysfunction in children, such tasks have not been studied in children with epilepsy. This is particularly important given the fact that executive tasks have heretof...

Objective: The role of seizure-related factors and psychopathology on neurocognitive functioning has been extensively studied throughout the literature. The present study, however, is among the first to examine the multiple etiological determinants of neuropsychological dysfunction in pediatric epilepsy by assessing the individual and combined expl...

Objective: Electrical status epilepticus of sleep (ESES) is a rare childhood epilepsy associated with global neuropsychological regression. Typically, ESES consists of bi-hemispheric epileptiform activity, however we present two patients (P1, age 8 & P2, age 11) with focal right hemisphere ESES. Similarities and differences between their neuropsych...

Objective: Electrical status epilepticus of sleep (ESES) is a rare childhood epilepsy that is associated with a distinct neuropsychological regression. Typically, ESES consists of bi-hemispheric epileptiform activity, however, we present an 8-year old patient with focal right hemisphere ESES. Despite the unusual focal nature of the presentation, ne...

The relations between attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and motor skills are well documented, with research indicating both early and lifelong motor deficits in children with this disorder. Despite neuroanatomical and neurodevelopmental differences, which may predict differential rates of motor impairment between ADHD subtypes, evalua...

Abstract Attention and executive function deficits are a common sequelae of many neurological conditions of childhood. Those with epilepsy frequently show such deficits, as executive dysfunction is common in all epilepsy syndromes of childhood. The purpose of this article is to review what is known about attention and executive functions, including...

Surgical resection of epileptic foci relies on accurate localization of the epileptogenic zone, often achieved by subdural and depth electrodes. Our epilepsy center has treated selected children with poorly localized medically refractory epilepsy with a staged surgical protocol, with at least one phase of invasive monitoring for localization and re...

Neuropsychological Conditions Across the Lifespan - edited by Jacobus Donders August 2018

Objective: Presentation of an unusual case of amnesic syndrome following a suspected AVM. The subject was a 14-year-old female (N) who suffered a large right temporo-parietal intra-parenchymal hemorrhage with extension into the ventricular system requiring surgical evacuation. She presented with a significant anterograde amnesic disorder that was g...

The assessment of effort is an important aspect of a comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation, as this can significantly impact data interpretation. While recent work has validated the appropriateness of adult-derived cutoffs for standalone effort measures in younger populations, little research has focused on embedded effort measures in childre...

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a frequent comorbidity in children with epilepsy. Despite similarities in behavioral manifestations of inattention and hyperactivity, it is unclear whether the neuropsychological endophenotypes of children with developmental ADHD differ from those with ADHD in the context of epilepsy. The present s...

Purpose: The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Fourth Edition is the most widely used intelligence quotient (IQ) test in use today. However, despite numerous studies on IQ in childhood epilepsy, data exist almost exclusively from prior editions of the test, and no studies to date provide information on the sensitivity of specific WISC-IV...

Multiple Sclerosis (MS), an autoimmune mediated disease of the central nervous system, has historically been considered a disease of young adulthood. However, there has been increasing recognition that the disease can occur in adolescence and even early childhood and recent years have witnessed a surge of studies documenting the clinical features o...

Children and adolescents with epilepsy are known to demonstrate executive function dysfunction, including working memory deficits and planning deficits. Accordingly, assessing specific executive function skills is important when evaluating these individuals. The present investigation examined the utility of two measures of executive functions-the T...

Objective: The seminal paper on cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome by Schmahmann and Sherman (1998), and subsequent studies, has expanded our understanding of the role of the cerebellum beyond motor functioning to psychological and cognitive functioning. However, many of these studies have examined patients between 1 week and 5 years post-inju...

Parents of children with tuberous sclerosis complex who underwent multistage resections for treatment of refractory seizures were offered a telephone questionnaire regarding quality of life (QOL) of child and family since surgery. Of 53 families, 39 responded. Age at epilepsy onset was birth to 3 months. Average duration of epilepsy before the firs...

The authors characterized the cognitive, adaptive, and behavioral sequelae of Coffin-Siris (CS) syndrome and epilepsy in a 7.5-year-old child. Little is known about the early neurobehavioral presentation of CS. Clinical features consistent with this genetic anomaly include underdeveloped tips and nails of the fifth fingers, extended infranasal depr...

Purpose – Researchers use the concept of biosociality and a disability studies framework of empowerment to present and analyze examples of community formation and participation for youth with pediatric multiple sclerosis. Methodology – The data were collected using participant observation, individual and focus group interviews during Teen Adventure...

The evaluation of bilingual children is a complicated endeavor because there are various views of how bilingualism affects brain organization and functioning. Added to that is the challenge of determining language development of Hispanic children living in a monolingual Spanish-speaking home in a Spanish-speaking country, but mostly exposed to Engl...

Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is often associated with epilepsy, mental retardation, and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Thus, screening for ASDs is important when evaluating these individuals. We examined the utility of the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) and Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ), two measures for screening for ASDs, in...

Background: Screening for autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) is of considerable utility in settings where children and adolescents with epilepsy are evaluated. For example, epilepsy occurs in approximately 5-38 percent of individuals with ASDs and in tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC), a disorder typically associated with epilepsy, ASD occurs in approx...