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Effects of early focal brain injury on memory for visuospatial patterns: selective deficits of global-local

Joan Stiles1, Catherine Stern2, Mark Appelbaum3

  • 1University of California, San Diego, Department of Cognitive Science.

Neuropsychology
|January 24, 2008
PubMed

Insights

Children with perinatal focal brain lesions (PL) show distinct visuospatial deficits. Right hemisphere PL (RPL) impacts global processing, while left hemisphere PL (LPL) affects local processing, revealing a double dissociation.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Science

Background:

  • Perinatal focal brain lesions (PL) can lead to early-onset visuospatial processing deficits in children.
  • Children with right hemisphere PL (RPL) often exhibit configural processing impairments, while those with left hemisphere PL (LPL) show featural processing deficits.
  • Previous research may have overestimated LPL deficits due to task structures favoring configural processing.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate selective deficits in global- and local-level visuospatial processing in children with RPL and LPL.
  • To utilize a novel task with balanced configural and featural processing demands to reveal within-task differential deficits.
  • To document a double dissociation in global-local processing based on the hemisphere of perinatal focal brain lesions.

Main Methods:

  • Sixty-two children (aged 5–14) participated: 19 with RPL, 19 with LPL, and 24 matched controls.
  • Participants reproduced hierarchical forms from memory, assessing reproduction accuracy at global and local levels.
  • A task was designed to impose comparable demands on both configural and featural processing.

Main Results:

  • Control children demonstrated equal accuracy in global and local reproduction.
  • Children with RPL showed selective impairment in global-level accuracy.
  • Children with LPL exhibited selective impairment in local-level accuracy, confirming a double dissociation.

Conclusions:

  • This study provides clear evidence of a double dissociation in visuospatial processing based on the hemisphere of perinatal focal brain lesions.
  • RPL is associated with impaired global (configural) processing, while LPL is linked to impaired local (featural) processing.
  • The findings highlight the importance of task design in accurately characterizing hemispheric-specific cognitive deficits.

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