United States version of the Stroke Driver Screening Assessment: a pilot study.

BACKGROUND: Most stroke survivors who resume driving in the United States do so within the first year. More than 87% of these individuals resume driving without a formal evaluation of their fitness to drive because of the absence of standard practices and generally accepted and valid screening tools. The Stroke Driver Screening Assessment (SDSA) is an established battery for predicting stroke survivors' driving performance but is not currently used in the United States. This pilot study investigated the predictive ability of the US version of the battery in a US-based cohort of stroke survivors. METHOD: Fifteen first-ever stroke survivors (age, 52±12 years) and 16 healthy adults (age, 40±16 years) were administered the US version of the SDSA in a standardized format. Performance on the SDSA was compared with driving performance in a high-fidelity driving simulator. RESULTS: Stroke and healthy participants' driving performance was predicted with 87% and 88% accuracy, respectively. CONCLUSION: The US version of the SDSA battery has the potential to be a good predictor of driving performance of mildly impaired stroke survivors. Larger studies are needed to further establish its predictive accuracy.

A new measure of visual location learning and memory: development and psychometric properties for the Brown Location Test (BLT).

There are a variety of well-established neuropsychological tests that are helpful in identifying global and specific verbal memory deficits. In contrast, tests of visual memory have produced less consistent results likely due in part to confounding variables such as verbal encodability, administration difficulties, and insufficient differentiation of among types of visual memory. The Brown Location Test (BLT) was designed to specifically measure visual memory for location of identical objects (dots) and address limitations found in commonly employed visual memory tests. This paper describes the empirical basis for the BLT and reports the psychometric properties of the test. Results indicate good internal and alternate form reliabilities. Factor analysis of a brief test battery confirmed that BLT performance is generally independent of verbal memory and global intellectual abilities. BLT performance declined with age, but there was no association between performance and gender, education, or intellectual functioning. In view of the favorable psychometric properties observed during preliminary studies, additional normative and validation studies in healthy and patient populations are warranted.