Mother knows best… or does she? Perceptions of the memory abilities of pediatric patients with epilepsy as reported by patients and their parents across time

Abstract

Purpose: This study compared the self-reported and parent-reported memory of children with epilepsy across time and explored the relationships between these measures of subjective memory and the children's actual performance on objective neuropsychological tests.

Method: One-hundred and nineteen children with epilepsy who were surgical candidates underwent comprehensive neuropsychological testing that included the Everyday Verbal Memory Questionnaire (EVMQ). Each child's parent and 82 of the children themselves completed the appropriate version of this subjective memory measure. After 9 months, the children returned for a second neuropsychological evaluation with 71 parents and 39 children completing the same questionnaire. Approximately one-third of the children in the study underwent surgery between the two evaluations. Standardized regression-based norms were used to quantify change in cognitive abilities across assessments.

Results: Results revealed significant relationships between parent reports and child reports of the children's memory abilities. Parent reports, but not child reports, correlated with the children's objective test scores at baseline. In contrast, children were more attuned to changes in their memory across time.

Conclusions: These findings demonstrate the importance of considering both parent and child perceptions of everyday cognitive functioning when evaluating cognition and cognitive changes over time in pediatric patients with epilepsy.

Keywords: Cognitive outcomes; Epilepsy surgery; Neuropsychological assessment; Pediatric epilepsy; Standardized regression-based change scores; Subjective memory.