ABSTRACT
Cognitive neuropsychology is strategically located at the boundary of the cognitive and neural sciences. Like other subdisciplines of cognitive science its objective is to provide a formal characterization of the mental structures and operations that subserve human cognitive capacity. The shift in focus in neuropsychological research from a concern with relating syndrome types to locus of brain damage to a concern with the implications that particular forms of cognitively impaired performance may have for theories of cognitive functioning has had a major methodological consequence. Important as this specifically methodological conclusion is for neuropsychological research, an even more important general implication follows from the emphasis on the development of detailed cognitive models as the basis for explicating patterns of cognitively impaired performance. A cognitive neuropsychological analysis of a patient's performance presumably provides a hypothesis about the nature of the transformation a cognitive system has undergone as a consequence of brain damage.
