The present retrospective study was undertaken to determine whether Trail Making Test A and B, Digit Span Forward and Backward, and TPT Memory and Location scores are differentially sensitive to right or left hemisphere brain damage. Groups of patients with right, left, and generalized cerebral lesions and matched normal controls were compared. Results showed a relative failure for any individual measure, difference, or ratio score to reliably distinguish between right and left hemisphere lesions. Patients with diffuse lesions performed significantly worse than non-neurologic medical controls and right and left lesion groups on Trails A and TPT Memory and Location. Results are discussed in terms of specific methodological variables including chronicity of lesion, the nature of the task demands, and priming effects.
Memory deficits are among the most common initial complaints of patients who are suffering from neurological disorders. The present study compared the relative clinical utility of the Wechsler Memory Scale and the Luria Memory Words Test in differentiating brain‐damaged (N = 60) from nonbrain‐damaged patients (N = 60). Separate stepwise regression analyses selected five variables from each test that accounted for the greatest between‐group variance. Separate discriminant functions then were computed that used the WMS and the Luria Words variables selected through the regression analyses. The WMS correctly classified 72% of the subjects, whereas the Luria Words correctly classified 76% of the subjects. A final discriminant function was computed that used all 10 variables and resulted in a classification accuracy of 86%, with 6% false positives and 6% false negatives. Results are discussed relative to the use of each instrument in both a general psychological assessment situation and when specific memory functioning is in question.
The role of proactive interference in verbal memory was examined in 154 normal and brain-damaged subjects. Subjects were matched on age, sex, education, presence or absence of brain damage, and administered the Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS) Stories in standard order (A+B) or reverse order (B+A). Both normal and brain-damaged subjects recalled fewer details from Story B than Story A regardless of order of administration. We conclude that Story B from the WMS is inherently a more difficult passage to recall than Story A. The recall of fewer Story B items relative to Story A is expected and not due to proactive interference.
This study represents an attempt to evaluate the construct validity of various verbal and nonverbal clinical memory tests. Marker variables for verbal, visual-perceptual-motor and attention-concentration abilities were employed in order to demonstrate the relative independence of these abilities from the memory measures. Subjects were 119 individuals (aged 16-74) from a combined sample of brain damaged and non-neurologic medical controls. Principal components analyses with orthogonal varimax rotations produced four factors in both Immediate and Delayed analyses: nonverbal memory and visual-perceptual-motor skills, verbal learning and memory, general verbal abilities, and attention-concentration. The inclusion of additional nonverbal memory measures helped to create a modality specific nonverbal factor but did not produce a pure nonverbal memory factor. The Wechsler Memory Quotient had modest loadings on three of the four factors.
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