Development of assessments for the right hemisphere symptoms (indifferent attitude) that obstructs effective rehabilitation.

左单侧空间忽视患者往往表现出对其困难漠不关心的态度。他们心情愉快，反应肤浅。由于这种态度，他们缺乏动力，容易失败。因此，他们从康复中得到的好处很少，即使忽视并不严重。有必要对妨碍有效康复的症状进行充分的测量，但没有客观的评估。这项研究的主要目的是对右半球症状进行评估。在项目期间设计了几项评估。第一个评估的独特之处在于，它采用了单侧空间忽视的常规测试方法，但仍旨在探索患者的广泛性注意力缺陷。第二种侧重于写作错误，特别是连续相似笔画的重复和遗漏错误。最后的评估包括对选择性和持续性注意力的五项测试。受试者被要求对目测或口头呈现的实验对象的表现作出反应或模仿。这表明，患有右半球症状的患者有非空间广义注意力缺陷，可以通过我们开发的测量来评估。另一方面，空间注意缺陷导致单侧空间忽视。每个评估都是根据研究计划制定的。正如我们所料，很难通过同样的评估来比较左右脑损伤患者的表现，因为前一组患者在视觉任务上表现得更好，而在语言任务上表现得更差。然而，如上所述，通过精心设计刺激呈现和反应方法，几乎可以达到研究的目的。随着研究对象的增加，预计将有进一步的研究。

Patients with left unilateral spatial neglect often show attitude indifferent to their difficulties. They are euphoric and react superficially. By the attitude, they are poorly motivated and tend to fall down. Consequently, they receive little benefit from rehabilitation, even if neglect is not severe. It is necessary to have adequate measurement for the symptoms that obstruct effective rehabilitation, but no objective assessment has been available.The main purpose of the research is to develop assessments for the right-hemisphere symptoms. Several assessments have been designed during the term of the project. The first assessment is unique in a way that adopts the method of conventional testing for unilateral spatial neglect but yet aimed at exploring patients' generalized attentional deficits. The second one focuses on errors in writing, especially on duplication and omission errors of continuous similar strokes. The final assessment consists of five tests for selective and sustained attention. Subjects were requested to respond to the target or imitate experimenter's performance presented visually or orally. It is suggested that patients with the right-hemisphere symptoms have non-spatial generalized attentional deficits that are assessable by the measurements we have developed. On the other hand, deficits of spatial attention result in unilateral spatial neglect. Each assessment was developed according to the research plan.As we expected, it was difficult to compare the performance of the left and right brain-damaged patients by the same assessments, since the former group of patients perform better on visual tasks and worse on verbal tasks than the latter group of patients. Nevertheless, the purpose of the research is almost achieved by elaboratedly designed methods of stimulus presentation and response, which is described above. Further study is expected with increased number of subjects.