Cognitive Effects of Unilateral Brain Lesions Secondary to Penetrating Missile Wounds

Abstract

The WAIS verbal and nonverbal subtest performance of Ss with unilateral brain lesions secondary to penetrating missile wounds was examined and compared with that of normal controls. The performance of matched right- and left-hemisphere lesion Ss differed significantly on only two verbal and one nonverbal measures, however, all performance differences were in the direction hypothesized. The performance of right-hemisphere lesioned and control Ss differed significantly on all measures, with consistently lower scores by brain-injured Ss, while the performance of left-hemisphere and control Ss differed significantly on the three verbal measures and WAIS Full Scale IQ. These results are in general agreement with previous reports using a similar research design and tend to support the hypothesis of differential impairment of verbal and nonverbal test performance in Ss with unilateral brain lesions.