Head turning and manual pointing to auditory targets have been studied in normal subjects and in subjects with right parietal damage. Important differences were found between these two types of movement. (1) In brain-damaged subjects, audiospatial manual pointing deficit patterns and audiospatial head turning deficit patterns were dissociated. Moreover, head turning deficits tended to appear peripherally in both auditory hemifields, while manual pointing deficits tended to appear unilaterally in the left hemifield. (2) In normal subjects, at all tested eccentricities in both hemifields, head turning performances showed a characteristic undershooting of auditory targets when compared to manual pointing. Results are discussed in terms of differences between the processes underlying audiomotor tasks that involve the head and tasks that involve the hands.

BOJIDAR PINEK AND MICHBLE BROUCHON. Head Turning versus Manual Pointing to Auditory Targets in Normal Subjects and in Subjects with Right Parietal Damage. LUIGI TROJANO, MARIA STANZIONE, AND DARIO GROSSI. Short-Term Memory and Verbal Learning with Auditory Phonological Coding Defect. A Neuropsychological Case Study. MIEKE VERFAELLIE, WILLIAM P. MILBERG, LAIRD S. CERMAK, AND LYNN L. LETOURNEAU. Priming of Spatial Configurations in Alcoholic Korsakoff’s Amnesia. KEN A. PALLER, ANDREW R. MAYES, KATHERINE M. THOMPSON, ANDREW W. YOUNG, JULIET ROBERTS, AND PETER R. MEUDELL. Priming of Face Matching in Amnesia. PETER ZIMMERMANN, REINER SPREGELMEYER, BRUNO FIMM, AND CLAUS-W. WALLESCH. Cognitive Slowing in Decision Tasks in Early and Advanced Parkinson’s Disease.

In order to study auditory spatial localization in subjects with posterior damage involving the parietal lobe, we investigated their manual pointing performances to linguistic and white noise signals distributed over six sound sources situated in the anterior auditory field at ear level. The results showed: (1) A striking difference between patterns of deficits associated with right and left damage. In subjects with right damage, auditory localization deficits occurred in the horizontal plane, were manifested as restrictions in the peripheral left auditory hemifield and tended to be related to left visual neglect. In subjects with left damage, auditory localization deficits occurred in the entire auditory field in the horizontal as well as vertical planes, and they were particularly strong in the antero-frontal region. (2) One subject with right damage and visual neglect but no left auditory spatial restriction, showed deficits in the right hemifield where sound source location tended to be overestimated. This subject also showed a better discrimination of the origin of a white noise than of a linguistic signal. Results are discussed in terms of hemispheric asymmetries of function.

In order to test the existence of an hemispheric asymmetry at a basic level of spatial information processing, six right handed and six left handed normal subjects were submitted to a manual pointing task to auditory targets. Results showed a shift in perceived target position according to the hand used for pointing, a striking asymmetry between the two auditory hemispaces reflected in both groups in directional error and dispersion.