Abstract
We tested a group of ten post-acute right-hemisphere damaged patients. Patients had no neglect according to paper-and-pencil cancellation tasks. They were administered computer-based single- and dual-tasks, requiring to orally name the position of appearance (e.g. left vs. right) of briefly-presented lateralized targets. Patients omitted a consistent number of contralesional targets (≈ 40%) under the single-task condition. When required to perform a concurrent task which recruited additional attentional resources (dual-tasks), patients' awareness for contralesional hemispace was severely affected, with less than one third of contralesional targets detected (≈ 70% of omissions). In contrast, performance for ipsilesional (right-sided) targets was close to ceiling, showing that the deficit unveiled by computer-based testing selectively affected the contralesional hemispace. We conclude that computer-based, attention-demanding tasks are strikingly more sensitive than cancellation tasks in detecting neglect, because they are relatively immune to compensatory strategies that are often deployed by post-acute patients.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 179-181 |
Number of pages | 3 |
Journal | Behavioural Neurology |
Volume | 26 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2013 |
Keywords
- attentional resources
- cognitive load
- dual-task
- Neglect
- neuropsychological assessment
- right hemisphere damage
- spatial awareness
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology
- Clinical Neurology
- Neurology