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How RBANS complemented language assessment and supported clinical decision making in adult rehabilitation

As an SLP, you're often asked to make decisions that go beyond language alone—particularly when working with adults with suspected cognitive changes. Understanding a patient's attention, memory, and overall cognitive status can play an important role in shaping referrals, treatment plans, and expectations for recovery. 

Maria Brask, MS, CCC-SLP, spent years in inpatient rehabilitation, regularly using RBANS® with adults recovering from stroke and traumatic brain injury. Now, she shares how cognitive assessment fit into her clinical workflow—and why it matters for your patients. 

In this conversation, Maria shares how RBANS fit into her clinical workflow, how it complemented the language assessments she was already using, and how the results helped inform treatment planning, referrals, and patient care.

Many educators have found themselves in this scenario: looking at a student's test results and feeling puzzled by what they see. For example, the student may read proficiently and have well-developed reasoning skills, but their verbal ability restricts how well they express what they know. These uneven cognitive profiles are far more common than many realize, and they often leave us asking ourselves, "What now?" 

While we recognize that every student has strengths and weaknesses, it can be challenging for educators to know the next step for students who perform well in one area and struggle in another. Let’s explore how to approach the situation in a way that ensures the student receives the support they need. 

Educators know that each student is unique in how they learn—and it’s part of what makes the job so fascinating and rewarding. Classrooms have diverse learners who process information and demonstrate their understanding in remarkably different ways. This natural variation in learning styles and cognitive strengths makes teaching both an art and a science, especially when interpreting and acting on assessment results that don't always tell the complete story.

It’s why cognitive assessments like the Differential Ability Scales™ (2nd ed., DAS™–II) play a crucial role, allowing educators to obtain a differential diagnosis. By pinpointing a specific cause for a given learning deficit, educators can feel like they’re not wasting time or resources but instead developing the right targeted interventions and accommodations to support the student's learning needs.