Subjective Organization of Verbal Memory and Learning in Adolescentswith Brain Damage.

Subjective organization (SO) of verbal memory and learning was investigatedfor 44 adolescent neurological patients, who were subdivided into four clinicalgroups by localization of lesion as follows: right hemisphere (RH), left hemisphere(LH), frontal (FL), and brain stem (BS). As expected, patients with RH lesionsperformed best on a verbal learning task, whereas patients with FL and BSlesions demonstrated very poor SO, suggesting a failure in categorizing memoryinput. Patients with LH lesions increased SO following successive trials,suggesting an active learning strategy. It is argued that SO analysis in neuropsychologyappears to be a particularly heuristic direction of further research in orderto establish a better understanding of memory and learning impairments ofpatients with brain damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]