Poor performance of right brain-damaged patients on Raven's coloured matrices: Derangement of general intelligence or of specific abilities?

G. Gainotti*, C. Caltagirone, G. Miceli

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Two groups of 170 left and 173 right brain-damaged patients were given the Raven's Coloured Matrices, in order to study the influence of the hemispheric side of the lesion on this test of visual-spatial intelligence. A significant difference was found between the two hemispheric groups, the right brain-damaged patients scoring worse than the left hemisphere- damaged subjects. Furthermore, patients with right hemispheric lesions showed a striking tendency to neglect the responses lying on the left side of the page, whereas subjects with left hemispheric damage showed only a mild tendency to neglect the alternatives lying on the right half of the sheet. The worse performances obtained on the Coloured Matrices by right brain-damaged patients seemed due for the most part to unilateral spatial neglect. These findings suggest that the bad performances of patients affected by retro-rolandic right hemispheric lesions are not due to a general intellectual impairment, but rather to the detrimental effect of unilateral spatial neglect and of a general disorder in visual-spatial analysis.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)675-680
Number of pages6
JournalNeuropsychologia
Volume15
Issue number4-5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1977
Externally publishedYes

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