ABSTRACT
This study examined the feasibility of the Atkinson Battery for Child Development for Examining Functional Vision (Atkinson, Anker, Rae, et al., 2002) to evaluate neurovisual functions of children with neurodevelopmental disorders in outpatient setting. A total of 90 patients underwent a comprehensive evaluation. Among these, a group of 33 children with Cerebral Palsy (CP), mean age 6 years, with different types of CP (26% diplegic, 37% hemiplegic and 37% tetraplegic) were selected to constitute the cohort of the study. Visual sensory measures as well as higher level visual functions were considered. Overall, 73% patients had impairments at the assessment protocol, the majority of which presenting difficulties on both visuoperceptual and visuospatial tasks (79%). Subgroups of participants presented similar profiles of impairments with spared basic visuocognitive abilities and limitations in visuoperceptual and visuospatial domains. The Atkinson's battery proved to be valuable for evaluation in outpatient setting and follow-up testing. Some limitations emerged. For the definition of personalized and detailed rehabilitation programs a breakdown of the different components of vision and subsequent in-depth evaluation are needed.
Subject(s)
Cerebral Palsy/complications , Cerebral Palsy/diagnosis , Ocular Motility Disorders/complications , Ocular Motility Disorders/diagnosis , Visual Perception , Cerebral Palsy/rehabilitation , Child , Child, Preschool , Esotropia/complications , Esotropia/diagnosis , Esotropia/rehabilitation , Exotropia/complications , Exotropia/diagnosis , Exotropia/rehabilitation , Female , Follow-Up Studies , Hemiplegia , Humans , Male , Nystagmus, Pathologic/complications , Nystagmus, Pathologic/diagnosis , Nystagmus, Pathologic/rehabilitation , Ocular Motility Disorders/rehabilitation , Outpatients , Quadriplegia , Vision Tests , Visual AcuityABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To investigate neurocognitive and language functions in a single case presenting with modality-specific naming difficulties secondary to traumatic brain injury (TBI). DESIGN: A comprehensive neuropsychological testing and specific assessment of naming and recognition functions were administered. Follow-up testing was administered 2 years post-injury to evaluate syndrome evolution. Rehabilitative intervention is described. RESULTS: Ability to name visually presented objects was greatly impaired. The patient can describe or demonstrate the use of objects she cannot name and to sort them into their appropriate categories, indicating adequate non-verbal recognition. The impairment is specific to visual naming, as recognition through modalities different from vision is adequate (e.g. by touching the object, hearing its sound or being provided with verbal definition of it). This study and follow-up testing illustrated the evolution of the deficit, from a visual agnosic impairment to the co-occurrence of partial deficit of visual naming of objects and letters (optic aphasia and alexia). CONCLUSION: The patient presents with mild pre-semantic deficit (in mapping visual information with semantics) as well as post-semantic impairments (in the association between semantics and lexical label). Such performance can be accommodated within Farah's formulation which implies superadditive mild damage at several stages of object recognition naming model.
