Doors and people: visual and verbal memory after unilateral temporal lobectomy

The study investigated the ability of A. D. Baddeley, H. Emslie, and I. Nimmo-Smith's (1994) Doors and People Memory Battery to discriminate between patients with left and right unilateral temporal lobectomy (TL). Patients, 47 of whom had undergone en bloc resection (23 left TL and 24 right TL) were tested on the memory battery. The results showed that verbal memory functioning was significantly more impaired in the left TL group, whereas visual memory was more impaired in the right TL group. Recall memory was slightly more impaired than recognition memory overall in the 2 patient groups. It is concluded that the test provides a neuropsychologically valid and sensitive measure of visual and verbal memory.