The Rivermead Perceptual Assessment Battery: its application to stroke patients and relationship with function

Abstract

The Rivermead Perceptual Assessment Battery (RPAB) was developed to identify deficits in visual perception. This study sought to examine the relationship of the RPAB to performance in activities of daily living (ADL), and to investigate the concurrent validity of the RPAB. Subjects were 101 stroke patients admitted for inpatient rehabilitation. The RPAB was administered on admission to rehabilitation; prior to this, the treating therapists used the RPAB categories to provide a consensus opinion of the presence of perceptual deficits. The Australian ADL Index was administered on admission to and discharge from rehabilitation. ADL performance improved for all patients during rehabilitation, but patients identified by the RPAB as having perceptual deficits performed more poorly at both admission and discharge than did patients without deficits. However, scores on individual RPAB categories and cognate ADL activities were not consistently related. There was little agreement between the RPAB and the therapists' expert opinion. This result was interpreted in the context of an informal evaluation, made by the testing therapist, of the reasons for failing individual subtests. It was concluded that diagnostic use of the RPAB should combine test scores with observations made during testing, and that the validity of the RPAB must still be questioned.