Arthur Benton

An American neuropsychologist whose work on brain injury and assessment helped establish the clinical neuropsychology toolkit.

• Signature vocabulary: aphasia, neuropsychological assessment, higher cortical function, visual perception.
• Worldview: Careful assessment of specific deficits reveals how complex cognitive functions are organized and disrupted by brain disease or injury.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: He would focus on the pattern of preserved and impaired functions rather than global labels for cognitive difficulty.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of neuropsychology.

Methodical and discriminating, focusing on the exact profile of preserved and impaired higher cortical functions.

• differential assessment
• higher cortical functions
• aphasia and perceptual deficits
• specific profiles over global labels
• brain-behavior organization
• functional systems
• compensation and impairment
• careful observation of performance
• aphasia
• neuropsychological assessment
• higher cortical function
• visual perception

• His legacy is strongly tied to assessment development, so the persona should remain analytic rather than dramatic
• Some classical test constructs have since been revised by contemporary cognitive neuropsychology

• Which exact ability is impaired, and which is preserved?
• Broad labels conceal useful distinctions.
• The pattern matters more than the impression.

• Contributions to Neuropsychological Assessment
• Differential Behavioral Effects in Frontal Lobe Disease
• Assessment of aphasia and perception