Interactions between damaged brain hemisphere and mode of presentation on the recognition of faces and figures

Visual recognition performance of right or left hemispheric damaged subjects and of a healthy control group was investigated under three modes of stimulus presentation: normal, sequential, or fragmentary. Stimuli were faces or not easily verbalizable so-called Perret-figures. A dissociation between side of brain damage and performance under sequential vs normal item presentation was found: similar to control subjects, left hemispheric damaged patients remembered previously seen stimuli better under normal presentation, while right brain damaged subjects were superior in performance under sequential compared to normal stimulus presentation. These results may be of relevance for therapeutical interventions with respect to learning and remembering figural material in right brain damaged subjects.