ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the reasons for poor ecological validity and offers recommendations that potentially allow an alternative method of identifying NBD based on structural observations of behaviour whilst translating observed performance within a neuroscientific frame of reference. Executive abilities rely heavily on functions of the prefrontal cortex that are vulnerable to traumatic brain injury (TBI). Whilst therefore executive dysfunction is a core feature of neurobehavioural disability (NBD), it is not always an obvious feature and may appear in a subtle form, especially when the injured person has made a good physical recovery or exhibits, what appears to be, good intelligence. By observing individuals carrying out these activities one can identify cognitive deficiencies associated with neurobehavioural disability. Such an activity is one of many daily activities central to community life that has a prescribed action sequence and temporal framework that can be incorporated into an assessment of neurobehavioural disability.
