Correlation of perceptual performance and activities of daily living in stroke patients

Twenty-five male stroke patients were assessed with the use of a battery of perceptual tests (Gross Visual Skills [Baum, 1981]. Adult Visual-Perceptual Assessment [Baylor University Medical Center, Occupational Therapy Department, 1980], Manikin and Feature Profile subtests of the Arthur Point Scale of Performance Tests [Arthur, 1943; Buros, 1974, 1978], Judgment of Line Orientation [Benton, Varney, & DeS. Hamsber, 1978], Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test [Bender, 1946], Haptic Visual Discrimination Test [McCarron & Dial, 1976, 1979a, 1979b], Block Design and Object Assembly subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised [Wechsler, 1981], and Test of Three-Dimensional Constructional Praxis [Benton, 1973a; Benton & Fogel, 1962]). Also administered was the Klein-Bell ADL Scale (Klein & Bell, 1982) to measure performance of activities of daily living. The research questions were as follows: (a) To what extent did this sample of stroke patients differ from the nomative samples on perceptual performance? (b) To what extent did any tests of perceptual performance correlate with performance of activities of daily living? and (c) What, if any, instruments were more useful in discriminating the perceptual performance of stroke patients from that of normative samples? The results indicated that stroke patients showed significant deficits in perceptual performance, some of which correlated with activities of daily living performance. Patients with right hemispheric lesions performed similarly to those with left hemispheric lesions except on the Haptic Visual Discrimination Test.