Performance on the Hooper Visual Organizational Test in patients diagnosed with subcortical vascular dementia:...

To examine the performance of individuals with vascular dementia (VaD) on the Hooper Visual Organization Test (HVOT) and to determine the influence of naming on HVOT performance in this population.

The HVOT is commonly administered to assess visuospatial perception among neurologic patients, but the test requires verbal identification of stimuli as well as spatial ability. Previous studies have examined the influence of naming on the HVOT, but the issue has not been systematically addressed in individuals with subcortical VaD.

Individuals with a diagnosis of VaD were administered the HVOT, three additional measures of visuospatial function (Block Design and Picture Completion subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised, Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test copy trial), and the Boston Naming Test (BNT).

On average, the VaD patients performed poorly compared with normative data on each of the cognitive measures, with the most pronounced deficit evident on the BNT. Regression analyses revealed that more than 60% of the variance in performance on the HVOT was accounted for by performance on the Block Design subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised; performance on the BNT did not contribute significantly.

The results suggest that VaD patients perform below expectations on the HVOT and that the measure is robust to naming deficits in this population.