Verbal and nonverbal memory abilities of adult brain-damaged patients

Retention abilities of three groups of patients were investigated in this study; ten left hemisphere brain-damaged patients (aphasics), ten right hemisphere-damaged patients, and ten patients with no known neurological deficits who served as controls. The patients were asked to detect repetitions of a word within a list of words presented either auditorily or visually. They were also tested for their ability to detect repeated pictures and repeated shapes. It was discovered that the aphasics had greater difficulty than the other two groups in retaining stimuli on the verbal subtests presented auditorily or visually. On the other hand, the right-hemisphere-damaged patients performed poorly on the visual subtests (verbal and nonverbal), but performed well on the auditorily presented verbal test. Application of these findings is offered for the clinical treatment of both right and left brain-injured patients.