An assessment tool for evaluating cognitive-communicative problems in patients with right hemisphere damage: Preliminary findings

The authors thank the staff of the Department of Communicative Disorders for their assistance in testing the right hemi-sphere stroke patients and Nancy Tran for her assistance in testing the nonneurologically impaired control subjects.

Abstract

This article briefly describes the primary characteristics ofthe communication problems associated with right hemisphere damage. It presents a test battery, the RIC Evaluation of Communication Problems in Right Hemisphere Dysfunction-2 (RICE-2; Halper, Burns, Cherney, & Mogil, 1991), that has been developed for this population. Preliminary results of a study to validate the RICE-2 indicate that the tool is sensitive to measuring the differences between nonneurologically impaired individuals and right hemisphere stroke patients. Test scores of individual subjects who are representative of different cognitive-communicative severity levels are presented to illustrate variability in patterns of performance.

Key Words:

• cognition
• communication
• evaluation
• right hemisphere stroke

Notes

The authors thank the staff of the Department of Communicative Disorders for their assistance in testing the right hemi-sphere stroke patients and Nancy Tran for her assistance in testing the nonneurologically impaired control subjects.