Date of Award
Summer 8-1-1987
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Samuel Schafer
Abstract
Psychologists assessing the visual recognition memory (VRM) of neuropsychologically compromised clients with the dual diagnosis of cognitive impairment and emotional sequelae confront two problems, including the dearth of studies dealing with the dually diagnosed (Menolascino, 1984) and inconsistent findings from past research on the effects of cerebral compromise on visual memory (Boller & DeRenzi, 1967; Cremonini, DeRenzi, & Faglioni, 1980; DeRenzi & Spinnler, 1966; DeRenzi, Faglioni, & Villa, 1977; Gouvier, 1983; Kimura, 1963). This study examines the effects of task load (number of stimuli), stimulus encodability, test latency, and cognitive processing efficiency on a group of dually diagnosed individuals who had suffered early cerebral involvement. Seventy-two clients recruited from the Devereux Foundation completed a Screening Battery designed to eliminate participants with perceptual and language processing handicaps that might have confounded their performance on 12 VRM tests. An unimpaired control group composed of 12 females and 22 males with an average age of 16.7 and an impaired group of 26 males and 4 females with an average age of 18.2 completed the study. Within groups, participants were divided into different levels of processing efficiency according to their performance scores on a visual sequential memory game. Computer selection of 26 cases from the two subject groups permitted three balanced analyses of variance on VRM mean scores. Significant interactions between groups included subject group x task load and subject group x stimulus encodability at the .01 level and stimulus encodability x task latency at the .05 level of confidence. Significant interactions between task load and stimulus encodability at t?e .01 level occurred between and within groups. As independent factors, subject group, task load, and stimulus encodability achieved significance at the .01 level, while the effects of processing efficiency and latency failed to achieve significance. Results of this study suggest that the encodability of the stimuli used to assess visual memory has a direct bearing on clinical testing and may partially explain some of the equivocal findings reported in the literature reviewed.
Recommended Citation
Blash, Thomas W. C., "Task Load, Stimulus Encodability, Test Latency, and Processing Efficiency Effects on the Visual Recognition Memory of the Chronic Neuropsychologically Impaired" (1987). All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3241.
https://scholars.indianastate.edu/etds/3241