No abstract

Both sensory and imaginal defects have been reported in unilateral neglect, but their assessment based on the description of famous squares can be difficult in a clinical setting. The O'clock Test is an alternative tool for revealing imaginal defects. Our aim was to demonstrate imaginal neglect in patients with left heminattention. Ten patients were studied and a mild unilateral defect in imaginal processes was found with an increase in the defect when the patients were fatigued.

Tulving described an effect of retrograde amnesia in a free-recall task of word lists, produced by inserting items having priority in recall. Other authors confirmed the amnesic effect without giving instructions for priority both in recall and in recognition tasks. The effect was explained by Tulving as a premature termination of encoding processes. The similarity between these experiments and the researches aimed at reproducing amnesia by emotional trauma led us to hypothesize that the two phenomena might be due to the same functional mechanisms. We have organized a free-recall task of word lists into which emotional items were inserted. Our aim was to verify whether with these experimental conditions Tulving's results would be reproduced. The obtained data show amnesic effects in free recall; nevertheless, they do not seem to confirm closely the experimental hypothesis. Lastly, changes in primacy and recency effects produced by emotional items are analyzed.

We describe a simple, three-dimensional constructional test (the Box test), which reflects common daily-living activities, to be used for the assessment of constructional disability in elderly brain-lesioned patients. Subjects are required to put as may of 12 objects of varied shape and volume as they can into a box. To carry out the task successfully subjects have to arrange the items according to an efficient constructional strategy. We administered this test to 68 normal subjects and to 50 brain-damaged patients. Analysis indicated the Box test is easy and simple to administer and can be used without difficulty by elderly patients having focal brain damage. Performance correlated well with general intelligence and other bidimensional, conventional constructional tasks. Right or left brain lesions have a similar, significant detrimental effect on performance but probably through different mechanisms.