Motor Free Visual Perceptual Test: Impact of Vertical Answer Cards Position on Performance of Adults with Hemispatial Visual Neglect

Abstract

Patients who have hemispatial visual neglect (HVN) have difficulty directing their attention toward the visual field contralateral to the side of the lesion. This affects their performance on perceptual assessment tests and masks related visual perceptual deficits. The aim of this study was to verify whether a vertical position of the answer cards of the Motor Free Visual Perceptual Test (MVPT) could overcome this problem. Three groups of subjects were involved in the study: 15 healthy subjects, 15 subjects who had right brain damage without HVN, and 9 subjects who had right brain damage with HVN. The presence of HVN was established by positive test results for at least one of the two tests used, the Albert Test and the Bells Test. The subjects performed the MVPT twice—once in its standard version, and once in a modified version in which the answer cards were presented in a vertical position. The equivalence between the two forms was confirmed with healthy subjects and subjects with right brain damage without HVN. Tor the subjects who had HVN, the vertical positioning of the answer cards caused significantly less interference (p < .05). The test-retest reliability coefficient for the two versions of the MVPT was 0.92–0.94.