Free-Drawing from Memory in Constructional Apraxia: A Case Series

Constructional apraxia is a neuropsychological and neurological impairment in activities such as building, assembling, and drawing. In this study data is presented on the performance of left and right hemisphere single focal stroke lesion participants on drawing tasks of houses, trees, and persons. Forty-one participants completed a comprehensive neuropsychological battery including the house-tree-person drawing task. The drawings were then rated as exhibiting signs of neurological impairment or non-impairment by three evaluators without knowledge of the medical condition of the patient. There was 72% agreement between the three evaluators of the 123 drawings. Both an analysis of variance and case series analysis was used to examine the data. Patterns of concordance with a previously outlined detailed neuropsychological model of constructional apraxia were found and the implications of the results are analyzed in the context of the current neuropsychological literature.