Comparison of neuropsychological rehabilitation techniques for unilateral neglect: An ABACADAEAF single-case experimental design

Abstract

Unilateral neglect is a debilitating attentional disorder whereby patients fail to report, respond or orient to information presented on one side of space. Previous studies have demonstrated improvements in neglect symptoms using rehabilitation techniques, such as anchoring or limb activation. We investigated the effectiveness of five interventions in reducing the unilateral neglect observed in patient F.P. A single-case ABACADAEAF design was used to investigate the effectiveness of musical stimulation (B), anchoring (C), vibratory stimulation (D), limb activation (E), and anchoring and vibratory stimulation combined (F), compared to baseline (A). Severity of neglect was measured using star cancellation, line crossing and line bisection tests. Tau-U statistical analyses were used to investigate significant differences between conditions. All interventions resulted in improvements in F.P.'s neglect. Anchoring (C), vibratory stimulation (D) and the combination of these two techniques (F) led to greatest improvements on all three tests of neglect. Musical stimulation led to improvements on the line bisection task only. Anchoring and vibratory stimulation were the most effective techniques for reducing neglect for this patient. Further research is needed to investigate whether the observed gains can be sustained on a longer-term basis, generalised to other tasks, and replicated in larger samples.

Keywords:

• Neglect
• Rehabilitation
• Anchoring
• Limb activation
• Vibratory stimulation