Do You Know What I Mean? Laypeople and Experts' Concepts of Cognition

Patients cognitive complaints and subsequent performance on neuropsychological tests often fail to relate. This could, in part, be caused by a Babylonic incongruence between laypeoples and experts use of cognition words or jargon. The present study examined the concurrency of experts and laypeople for 18 neuropsychological tests in the cognitive domains language, memory, attention/concentration, perception, and thinking (executive functioning). This was done by correlating the classifications of the laypeople and experts for individual tests and within each domain. A high domain concurrency was found, indicated by domain correlations of the classifications between laypeople and experts ranging from r(s).79 to .92, with exception of the domain attention (r(s).32). Importantly, with respect to the classification of each individual test in a cognitive domain, large variations in correlations were found, ranging from r(s).30 up to r(s)1.0. These results indicate that there is agreement between the concepts laypeople use and the theory-based concepts of the experts. Our study also offers valuable insight for the clinical practice: tests with a high correlation should be used to aid the clarity of communication in the clinical practice, for instance when giving feedback on performance.