MOTOR FREE VISUAL PERCEPTUAL TEST - IMPACT OF VERTICAL ANSWER CARDS POSITION ON PERFORMANCE OF ADULTS WITH HEMISPATIAL VISUAL NEGLECT

Patients who have hemispatial visual neglect (HVN) have difficulty dir ecting their attention toward the visual field contralateral to the si de of the lesion. This affects their performance on perceptual assessm ent tests and masks related visual perceptual deficits. The aim of thi s study was to verify whether a vertical position of the answer cards of the Motor Free Visual Perceptual Test (MVPT) could overcome this pr oblem. Three groups of subjects were involved in the study: 15 healthy subjects, 15 subjects who had right brain damage without HVN, and 9 s ubjects who had right brain damage with HVN. The presence of HVN was e stablished by positive test results for at least one of the two tests used, the Albert Test and the Bells Test. The subjects performed the M VPT twice - once in its standard version, and once in a modified versi on in which the answer cards were presented in a vertical position. Th e equivalence between the two forms was confirmed with healthy subject s and subjects with right brain damage without HVN. For the subjects w ho had HVN, the vertical positioning of the answer cards caused signif icantly less interference (p < .05). The test-retest reliability coeff icient for the two versions of the MVPT was 0.92 - 0.94.