GROUPING BEHAVIOR OF NORMAL PERSONS AND OF PERSONS WITH LESIONS OF THE BRAIN

Abstract

In an investigation of grouping behavior in patients with cerebral lesions and in normal persons, Halstead¹found both quantitative and qualitative deviations from the normal in the performances of certain patients with cerebral injury. It was found, for example, that patients with a primary lesion in either the right or the left frontal lobe (1) employed fewer objects "spontaneously" from a field of 62 test objects in response to the instruction to place those together which "seem to belong together"; (2) recalled fewer objects after an interval of five minutes; (3) manifested little or no differential recall of grouped as opposed to ungrouped objects; (4) produced a smaller total number of groups, and (5) deviated characteristically in the distribution of the types of groups created, as determined by an adaptation of Klüver's method of equivalent and nonequivalent stimuli. This work, based on neurosurgical cases, seemed to indicate that various