Psychological changes over a five year period following bilateral prefrontal lobotomy.

A Dictionary of Neuropsychology

“…DIGIT SPAN SUBTEST: (WAIS-R) failure on one of the two trials of the W AIS-R may be due to distraction, noncooperation, inattentiveness, or lack of concentration; normal range forward is six plus or minus one (Spitz et a1., 1972); normal range backwards is four to five; normal span decreases about 1 point after age 70; primarily measures the efficiency of attention (Spitz et a1., 1972); anxiety tends to reduce the number of digits recalled (Mueller, 1979;Pyke & Agnew, 1963); normal raw score difference between Digits Forward and Digits Backward tends to range around 1.0 (Costa, 1975); Digits forward: more vulnerable to left hemisphere involvement than to either right or diffuse damage (Newcombe, 1969;Weinberg et a1., 1972); declines with age, a little in the late sixties to early seventies, more sharply after that (Hulicka, 1966;Kramer & Jarvik, 1979); when patient recalls more digits reversed than forward, probably reflects the patient's lack of effort on a simple task and is more a measure of efficiency of attention rather than memory (Spitz et a1., 1972); in the first months following head trauma or psychosurgery, the digit span forward is likely to be subnormal, but is also likely to show returns to normal levels during the subsequent years (Goodwin, 1983a;Lezak, 1979b;Scherer et a1., 1957); repetition of less than five digits forward by a non-retarded adult without obvious aphasia indicates defective attention; Digits Backwards: uses working memory; involves mental double-tracking in that both the memory and the reversing operations must proceed simultaneously; may depend upon internal visual scanning (Weinberg et a1., 1972); patients with left-hemisphere damage, dementia. and visual field defects have shorter backwards spans than forwards (Newcombe, 1969;Weinberg et a1., 1972); may not be affected in Korsakoff's psychosis; may show little improvement over time following trauma (Lezak, 1979b) or psychosurgery (Scherer et at, 1957). Digits in general brain disease: 1. perseveration, 2. reverse span ofless than three digits or a difference score between forwards and backwards of more than three, 3. intrusions.…”