Block constructions of chronic alcoholic and unilateral brain-damaged patients: a test of the right hemisphere vulnerability hypothesis of alcoholism.

A detailed analysis of the block construction performance of chronic alcoholics, unilateral brain-damaged patients, and normal control subjects was conducted to test two hypotheses: (a) that alcoholics perform similarly to right-hemisphere damaged (RHD) patients but not left-hemisphere damaged (LHD) patients; and (b) that unilateral brain-damaged patients display qualitatively different strategies and errors. Differences in performance without a time limit and broken configuration errors suggest that the alcoholics have not incurred the type of visuospatial impairment characteristic of RHD patients. The LHD and RHD patients showed qualitative differences in their strategies and errors. Implications of the findings for research and clinical assessment of visuospatial dysfunction are discussed.