Validation of “Neurit.Space”: Three Digital Tests for the Neuropsychological Evaluation of Unilateral Spatial Neglect

Abstract

Patients suffering from Unilateral Spatial Neglect (USN) fail to pay attention to, respond to, and report sensory events occurring in the contralesional side of space. The traditional neuropsychological assessment of USN is based on paper-and-pencil tests, whose data recording and scoring may be subjected to human error. The utilization of technological devices can be expected to improve the assessment of USN. Therefore, we built Neurit.Space, a modified digital version of three paper-and-pencil tests, widely used to detect signs of USN, namely: Bells Cancellation, Line Bisection and Five Elements Drawing Test. Administration and data processing is fully automatic. Twelve right brain-damaged patients (six with and six without USN) and 12 age- and education-balanced healthy participants were enrolled in the study. All participants were administered both the computerized and the paper-and-pencil versions of the tests. The results of this preliminary study showed good sensitivity, specificity, and usability of Neurit.Space, suggesting that these digital tests are a promising tool for the evaluation of USN, both in clinical and in research settings.

Verbal and non-verbal recognition memory assessment: validation of a computerized version of the Recognition Memory Test

“…New normative data for computerized tests must be collected when no equivalence with the paper-and-pencil version of the tests is proved. Several tests have already been adapted for computerized presentation, such as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment – MoCA [ 25 ], the Clock Drawing Test, the Pentagon Drawing Test [ 26 ], the Rey Complex Figure copy task [ 27 ], the Bells Cancellation, Line Bisection and Five Elements Drawing Tests [ 28 ]: these tests are, of course, critical in the assessment of cognitive functioning.…”