A comparison of temporal lobe with non-temporal lobe brain damage as shown by various psychological tests

Purpose of the Study. This study was concerned with the comparison of test results obtained from two groups of brain-damaged patients; e.g., temporal lobe and non-temporal lobe, and a control group of psychiatric patients seen at the Department of Psychology and Child Development at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. Testing Procedure and Subiects. The Wechsler-Bellevue Form I or the WISC, the Rorschach, and the Bender Gestalt test were administered to 6 left temporal lobe patients, 7 right temporal lobe patients, and 6 bilateral temporal lobe patients, bringing the total number of temporal lobe subjects to 19, Nineteen non-temporal brain-damaged patients and 19 control subjects were tested in the same way. These subjects were taken from the same age group and socio-economic level. In order to determine the comparability between test responses given by each group, Chi-Squares were computed. The data revealed no significant differences among the temporal lobe patients. Comparisons of responses of temporal lobe patients with those of non-temporal lobe patients revealed the following significant results: 1. Temporal lobe patients scored significantly lower on the Verbal Scale of the Wechsler- Bellevue and the WISC than on the Performance Scale, whereas non-temporal lobe patients and controls scored lower on Performance than Verbal. 2. Temporal lobe patients scored significantly lower on Comprehension than on Information. Non-temporal lobe patients and controls scored lower on Information than on Comprehension. 3. Temporal lobe patients scored significantly higher on Block Design than on the mean of the other performance tests. Non-temporal patients were higher on the mean of the other performance tests. 4. Temporal lobe patients gave significantly more labile responses on the Rorschach than did nontemporal patients or controls. 5. A significantly greater number of temporal lobe patients produced fair to good Bender Gestalt drawings than did non-temporal patients. Control subjects produced better Bender Gestalt drawings than either brain-damaged group. 6. A significantly greater number of temporal lobe patients manifested unusual behavior than did non-temporal patients or controls. 7. Among male patients, temporal and nontemporal brain-damaged subjects scored significantly lower on Arithmetic than did the controls. It was concluded that temporal lobe braindamaged patients present a different pattern of test responses from that which may be obtained from nontemporal lobe brain-damaged patients or from nonbrain-damaged psychiatric patients.