Research
In general, Elizabeth Warrington's research work focused on cognitive abilities and deficits. Her research has played an important role in the discovery and characterization of semantic dementia. She conducted extensive research in the areas of amnesia, memory, and dementia. Warrington has also contributed to the development of more accurate tests used to diagnose degenerative brain conditions.
In one of Warrington's earliest studies, she investigated eighty right handed patients who showed signs of a unilateral cerebral lesion. The unilateral cerebral lesions may have included damage from problems such as a stroke or tumor. Subjects with lesions affecting the right side of their brain performed worse than subjects with left side lesions and control subjects when attempting both the Incomplete Letters Task and the Gollin Incomplete Figures Task. The results of this study provided evidence of hemispheric lateralization.
Entirely by accident, Elizabeth Warrington discovered a task in which patients suffering from severe amnesia displayed signs of memory. She accomplished this using the Gollin incomplete figures task. When presenting patients with the second viewing of the figures, patients showed good retention of the initially unrecognizable images. These patients were classified as displaying signs of “normal” memory.
To further validate the discovery of “normal” memory in severe amnesiacs, Warrington used methods involving stem completion. The stem completion tests involved patients learning a battery of words, and later identifying the learned words. Patients were able to identify a previously learned word when presented with the first three letters, but were unable to identify a previously learned word when given the choice between a learned word and unknown word. These tests provided further evidence of different types of memory, now known as implicit memory and explicit memory.
In a test administered by Warrington and Tim Shallice from University College London, the short term memory of a patient who suffered head trauma following a motorcycle accident was tested. Although the patient displayed a digit span of one (as opposed to the average persons digit span of five to nine), he was able to form certain types of long term memory. The collected data suggested that short term memory was not necessarily required for the formation of long term memories.
Read more about this topic: Elizabeth Warrington
Famous quotes containing the word research:
“Men talk, but rarely about anything personal. Recent research on friendship ... has shown that male relationships are based on shared activities: men tend to do things together rather than simply be together.... Female friendships, particularly close friendships, are usually based on self-disclosure, or on talking about intimate aspects of their lives.”
—Bettina Arndt (20th century)
“The great question that has never been answered and which I have not get been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What does a women want?””
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical-minded affairs.”
—Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)