Apport de la neuropsychologie clinique à l'examen psychologique de l'enfant

Abstract EN

The psychological examination is often performed by clinical psychologists who see children in their consultations.

The complaints that motivate these requests for consultations are in the majority of cases from children who are facing difficulties in their learning at school.

Conventually, the psychological examination of major psychological functions such as memory, verbal and perceptual reasoning, attention, affectivity and defensive strategies of the child allows to orient the diagnosis and to distinguish between the place of the affective, the cognitive, the motivational and sometimes the relational in the family in the initial complaint.

With the advent of clinical neuropsychology and new perspectives in cognitive psychology, conventional psychological examination would gain in precision and finesse if the clinical psychologist broadens his conception by integrating the essential aspects of both disciplines into his daily practice.

In this article, we have chosen to show, in the light of a clinical case, how a clinical psychologist could take advantage of certain advances in clinical neuropsychology in order to better identify the child's difficulties.

Thus, we will understand how, in some children, a disorder that appears to be cognitive or emotional is in reality only the result of a neuropsychological type of disorder.