Doors and People

Doors and People Alan Baddeley, Hazel Emslie and Ian Nimmo-Smith

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  Age Range: 18 to 80 years


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  Administration: Individual – 35 to 40 minutes

Doors and People is a test of long-term memory. It yields a single age-scaled overall score which can be \’unpacked\’ to give separate measures of visual and verbal memory, recall and recognition, and forgetting. It is designed for use both as a clinical tool and as a research instrument. Whereas The Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test predicts everyday memory problems, the Doors and People test provides a more analytic overview of long-term explicit memory.

The nature of the test

The test comprises four subcomponents:

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  Visual recognition – The subject attempts to memorize a series of coloured photographs of doors. Memory is tested by recognition of each target door from a set of four doors varying in similarity, and hence difficulty.

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  Visual recall – The subject copies four patterns, and subsequently attempts to draw them from memory. A total of three learning trials are allowed, followed by a delayed recall.

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  Verbal recognition – The subject reads out a series of names and is subsequently required to recognize each from sets of four items.

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  Verbal recall – The subject is required to learn the names of four people, a doctor, a postman, a minister, and a newspaper boy. Again three learning trials are allowed, followed by a delayed recall to measure forgetting.

Factor analysis of an age-stratified sample of 238 normal subjects indicated a strong general memory factor, followed by a weaker visual/verbal factor. Studies indicate that the test is sensitive across a wide range of abilities, from elderly patients with Alzheimer\’s disease, of low educational level, to young graduate students. Patients studied following temporal lobectomy show the predicted association between side of lesion and visual or verbal memory deficit.

Clinical strengths

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  It gives a broad-based measure of the clinically most crucial component of memory.


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  It can be used analytically to identify a typical patterns of deficit.


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  All measures are based on at least two separate subtests, hence increasing reliability.


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  It has a wide range of application and is arranged that even grossly impaired patients avoid obvious failure.


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  It is a test that almost all patients enjoy.

This test is available to professionals other than psychologists, in particular Occupational Therapists, Psychiatrists and Neurologists however further training will be required. Please contact us for more details.

Complete kit: Includes manual, 25 scoring sheets, 3 stimulus books in a bag