Saturday, August 23, 2008

Left Hemisphere Neglect

Occasionally I see clients that tend to "neglect" the left side of their paper during the visual processing pretest. They don't see or circle pairs on the left side of the paper nearly as frequently as they do on the right. This may indicate a weakness in the right hemisphere of the brain. In training children with this pretest behavior, I usually choose to target tasks with the left hand or left foot as the student becomes able to handle the challenge. I just found an article that said, "...left hand movements produced a significant reduction in the severity of neglect only when these movements were made on the left side of space." This seems to suggest simple left handed/footed tasks. Sometimes I add crossing midline with the left hand, adding movement of the left hand in the right hemisphere space. Though this path is important, I'm not sure that it's indicated for left hemisphere neglect. See article abstract.

Left Hemisphere Neglect Article