Tower of London Test

The Tower of London is a well known and somewhat controversial test used in applied clinical neuropsychology for the assessment of executive functioning. The test consists of two boards with pegs and several beads with different colors. The examiner (usually a clinical psychologist or a neuropsychologist) uses the beads and the boards to present the examinee with problem-solving tasks. Several variants of the test exist, including a stand-alone test by William Culbertson and Eric Zillmer (published by Drexel University) and a child/adolescent version that is part of the NEPSY neuropsychological battery of tests by Marit Korkman, Ursula Kirk, and Sally Kemp. The performance of the examinee is compared to representative samples of individuals the same age in order to derive hypotheses about the person's executive cognitive ability, especially as it may relate to brain damage. A certain degree of controversy surrounds the test's construct validity.