Time as a variable in the performance of hemisphere-damaged patients on the Elithorn Perceptual Maze Test

Eighteen LH aphasic patients, 11 LH nonaphasic patients, 19 RH patients and 30 normal controls were compared on the Elithorn Perceptual Maze Test (EPMT) under both timed (T) and untimed (U) conditions. Results show that (a) normals were superior to LH groups within the T, but not the U, condition; (b) normal and LH groups were superior to RH groups under both T and U conditions; (c) the 2 LH groups did not differ from each other and (d) the RH group without language difficulty was superior to the RH group with language difficulty in the T, but not the U, condition. Additional findings were that (a) RH patients were able to process significantly fewer dots for maze solution than LH patients, (b) the more aphasic the patient, the more he improved his score from the T to the U condition. The data were discussed in terms of differential processing in R and LH groups, the RH groups being more likely to be impeded by the visual and spatial features of the task, the LH groups by the language and sequencing features.