Naturalistic action production following right hemisphere stroke

Abstract

An unselected group of right hemisphere, semi-acute stroke patients ( n=30) was run on a laboratory test of naturalistic action production and was found to commit errors of action at a higher rate than what was previously reported for recovering head injury patients [Schwartz et al., Naturalistic action impairment in closed head injury. Neuropsychology, 1997, 8, 59–72]. There were strong similarities in how these two patient groups responded to variations in task demands and in the pattern of errors they produced. Hemispatial biases were evident in the errors of right hemisphere patients with neglect but not those without neglect; and neglect patients also many errors that were unrelated to the spatial layout. We argue that a non-specific resource limitation — which might translate as reduced arousal or effort — is central to the breakdown of naturalistic action production after brain damage, and right hemisphere patients are especially vulnerable to this resource limitation and its behavioral consequences.