Abstract
The Pediatric Test of Brain Injury (PTBI) is designed to assess neurocognitive, language, and literacy abilities that are relevant to the school curriculum of children and adolescents recovering from brain injury. The PTBI is intended to help clinicians establish baseline levels of cognitive-linguistic abilities in the acute stages of recovery, identify strengths and weaknesses for informing intervention, monitor functional changes and track recovery patterns, and guide decision making related to school reintegration and educational performance. This article describes the research version of the PTBI with regard to theoretical concerns guiding its development, selection of neurocognitive and language abilities that are relevant to the school curriculum and likely to be affected by brain injury, the rationale for tracking early recovery, and research being conducted on the PTBI to establish criterion-referenced benchmarks for children and adolescents from age 6 through 16 years. Two case examples illustrate qualitative interpretations of results on each of the PTBI subtests, which are discussed with regard to implications for further curriculum-based language assessment and successful reintegration into school.