Effects of unilateral vascular lesions and gender on visual spatial and auditory verbal attention span.

Abstract

Unilateral cerebral vascular accidents (CVA) produce dominant hemisphere deficits in language and verbal memory, while nondominant hemisphere lesions often impair visual spatial analysis and visual memory. However, effects of unilateral lesions are less specified for visual spatial and auditory verbal attention span. The present study investigated whether tasks of attention span were sensitive to the effects of unilateral strokes. Left CVA females and males were compared to right CVA females and males on these measures. Age and education were not significantly related to performance Significant gender by stroke laterality interactions were found for the visual spatial attention span tasks. Left CVA females performed significantly worse than the other CVA groups on the visual spatial measures. These results suggest that there may be gender related differences in the effects of unilateral CVA on tasks of attention span.