Fielding students Tonya L. Bennett and Casey J. Dawson, and faculty member Henry V. Soper present research poster at Fielding's Winter Session 2012

Neuropsychological Analysis of the Visual Organization Test

Tonya L. Bennett, Student, School of Psychology, Casey J. Dawson, Student, School of Psychology and Henry V. Soper, Faculty, School of Psychology

Objective. Preliminary work suggested that the item percept often can be determined by only one of the two to four elements in each stimulus array, and “Visual Organization” is not needed. Those with weakness on the right side of the brain might well tend to look at individual items to determine the target, and, hence, with poor visual organization skills would still get several answers correct. Method. The 100 individual items composing the 30 stimuli for the VOT were presented individually to 191 adults, including 44 college students, all with no known neurological impairments. This was followed by the standard administration of the 30-item VOT, on which most performed well (mean = 25.4, SD = 2.92). The 100-item presentation was administered through a booklet form. Results. The prior results were confirmed. For 16 of the 30 stimuli there was at least one element that alone sufficed for correct identification of the stimulus at least 90% the time, rendering “visual organization” not necessary. Also, for 24 of the items one element results in a correct score of at least half the time. Conclusions. The VOT has proven to be an excellent test to determine brain damage. Just because identification can be made from a single item, our patients do not necessarily do it, but these results do call into question the “Visual Organization” aspect of the VOT. On the other hand, other gestaltic principals may be called into use when using only a single element for making a response.