[Standardized analysis of visual spatial perception. Construction of the procedure and applications]

Assessment of visuo-spatial perception (VS) in brain-damaged patients. So far, no comprehensive methods for reliable assessment of visuo-spatial deficits after brain damage have been described. The tests usually applied are subtests of intelligence tests, paper-pencil tests or visual-constructive tests which also require motor and planning abilities. Almost all these methods are unsuitable for measuring therapeutic changes and do not reveal specific impairments. The computational method presented here (VS) is suitable for the quantitative assessment of visuo-spatial functions, e.g. subjective visual vertical and horizontal; orientation, length, distance, form and position discrimination as well as line bisection. It can easily be installed on an IBM compatible PC. A clinical standard examination can be performed within 20-30 minutes including numerical and graphical analysis of the results. The method is sensitive for measuring therapeutic changes. Moreover, it offers a wide range of experimental task manipulations for more sophisticated experimental tests.