The nature of deficits in the rate of information processing after acute mild closed head injury.
Item
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Title
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The nature of deficits in the rate of information processing after acute mild closed head injury.
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Identifier
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AAI9304731
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identifier
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9304731
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Creator
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Senior, Graeme John.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Doreen Berman
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Date
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1992
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Clinical | Health Sciences, Medicine and Surgery | Psychology, Physiological
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Abstract
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The present study used nine variants of memory scanning procedure to determine the nature of information processing deficits in a group of 13 mild closed head-injured (CHI) patients; by comparing their performance with 13 age-, sex-, education-, and occupation-matched controls. All CHI subjects had experienced a loss of consciousness of less than 20 minutes, had Glasgow Coma Scale scores on admission of 13 or greater, and were tested within 72 hours of their injury. The first of the nine tasks evaluated the rate at which simple fine motor movements were programmed. The remaining eight tasks, were stimulus matching tests that varied in terms of stimulus type (consonants, numbers, words, and patterns), task complexity, and temporal delay between stimulus and comparison (simultaneous, delayed, subtraction, and categorization). In all the matching tasks, one to four comparison stimuli were presented with a probe stimulus. In the simultaneous identity match conditions, the categorization and subtraction tasks, both probe and comparison set remained on a computer screen until the subject responded. In the delayed conditions, a delay was introduced between stimulus and probe presentations.;All subjects, CHI and not, showed a linear increase in response times as a function of increases in the number of comparison stimuli in a set. Least squares linear regression was used to generate slope and intercept estimates for each subject on each task. Acute mild CHI subjects had significantly steeper slopes than controls on all tasks, suggesting that the slowed rate of information processing is general and not specific to the particular cognitive systems studied. With the exception of the two tasks involving number stimuli, CHI intercept estimates were no different or, in some cases, were faster than those of controls. This indicated that acute mild head injury specifically affected the rate at which central comparison processes were performed and spared the more peripheral sensory, perceptual, decision-making and response execution processes. The implications of these findings for the assessment and cognitive rehabilitation of mild head-injured patients were discussed. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
