Clinical utility of a recognition paradigm of the Visual Form Discrimination Test

Abstract

The utility of the Visual Form Discrimination Test as a motor free test of visual discrimination and recognition memory was first evaluated in samples of young and elderly community dwelling adults. Weighted score performance on the discrimination test was approximately two points higher than that of the recognition test for both age groups. The older group made more peripheral errors on both versions of the test and fewer correct responses on the recognition test than the younger group. In Study 2, the Visual Form tasks were administered to patient groups with left or right hemisphere stroke. Both patient groups were lower on both the discrimination and recognition versions of the Visual Form Test relative to the controls in Study 1. When evaluating the visual field in which major rotations and major distortions occurred, the expected contralateral neglect was observed for the stroke groups. The recognition version of the Visual Form Test appears to be sensitive to subtle hemi-spatial neglect. The results from these studies support the utility of these motor-free visual processing tasks.