Development of a new nonverbal memory test (v 1.0)

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  The development of a non-verbal test of accelerated long term forgetting (ALF) for use in people with epilepsy

• IRAS ID

  163351

• Contact name

  Joanne Crossley

• Contact email

  umjc@leeds.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  University of Leeds

• Duration of Study in the UK

  1 years, 1 months, 28 days

• Research summary

  Many people with epilepsy report memory problems. Currently, clinicians assess memory problems using standardised memory tests, which assess people’s ability to remember information typically after a 20-30 minute delay. However, some people with epilepsy report that they experience forgetting of information over longer periods than this, typically after hours or days. This can significantly impact on individual’s day to day functioning and quality of life. This research is an attempt to develop a new memory test that would assess people’s ability to remember visual information over longer time intervals. This would give us a better understanding of the range of problems experienced by people with epilepsy and would help clinicians identify appropriate interventions and support.
  This study would recruit people with temporal lobe epilepsy from Neurology clinics at St James’s University Hospital, Leeds. They will be asked to complete a number of existing memory and thinking tasks as well as the new memory test that has been developed. This test will involve looking at images of emotionally neutral scenes. Over a period of 3 weeks, participants will be contacted by telephone and asked a series of questions to elicit how much of the images they can remember. The performance of people with epilepsy will be compared to those without epilepsy to help evaluate whether it is an adequate memory test. People will also be asked for their feedback on the new test to ensure that the test is acceptable to people with epilepsy.

• REC name

  East Midlands - Nottingham 1 Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  15/EM/0428

• Date of REC Opinion

  30 Sep 2015

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion