Rural-Urban Dichotomy On Neuropsychological Tests In Zambia

The fascinating nature of brain-behaviour relationship has been a subject of interest for many people from time immemorial. In the relatively new field of Clinical Neuropsychology, the typical variables affecting an individual's performance on neuropsychological tests have been education, age, gender or lesions to the Central Nervous System. From an established research to formulate the normative standards for Zambia in the area of neuropsychological tests, I have highlighted the role that residency (rural-urban dichotomy) plays with regard to influencing how an individual performs on neuropsychological tests. Rather than mere geographical differences, there are salient features that make life in urban areas different from that of rural areas such as differences in education, health care facilities, social amenities, general life experiences and values. These variables have an effect on a number of neurocognitive domains of individuals such as speed of information processing and verbal fluency, hence the differences in performance of educational or neuropsychological tests. Reading this piece of work will thus be worthwhile for people from diverse backgrounds.