Background:
Patient age: 41, came for a diagnosis pertaining to attentional difficulties.
Screening
When observing the Norms Comparative Chart, we notice severe attentional difficulties. These difficulties are displayed in three red indices (A, T & H). As a rule, the more red indices displayed the higher the propensity that severe attentional disorders will be displayed, moreover when we see a coupling of
abnormal results in indices H / I together with those of A / T, the chances of this being a false positive are low.
Norm Comparative Chart
The relatively low T result may also point to difficulties in cognitive function and to sluggish cognitive tempo, we would recommend to further investigation to this, especially if the patients complain about such difficulties.
When observing the Patient Performance Chart, we can see that when exposed to a heavy load of visual distractors, the patient’s performance is substantially affected, in the manifestation of hyperreactive tendencies.
In fact, the chart depicts an attentional compensation mechanism.
When the A index is low, the Hyper-reactive behavior increases – seen as a reduced score in the H index in the chart. The patient is (concisely or subconsciously) using strategies such as doodling, leg bouncing, head movements or other to achieve high attentiveness levels. The way we can observe this in the chart, is that when index A index began on a low score (75) and in the H index was high (100), the patient became more hyperreactive H index reduced to a 90 score, while the A index increased to a 90 score and remained there. The hyperactivity slowly stopped (meaning returned to its previous level). The moment it became difficult for the patient to maintain a high attentive level (see phase 6 in the test) hyper-reactive behavior reappeared which was followed with a rise in index A back to a 90 score.
Another clue that this is not a case of distraction, is in the I index scores, the patients’ performance improved when exposed to situations of high loads of distraction (phases 2,6 and 7 of the MOXO d-CPT™).
Summary
We clearly see a patient that is having attentional difficulties, and there is a high probability that this a case of an attentional disorder, therefore there is need to utilize additional tools to substantiate the diagnosis.
The patient is probably aware to their difficulties and is utilizing compensation mechanisms to maintain high attention.
We recommended to praise the patient for using these tools and suggest more tools to assist them.
