Assessment of feigned cognitive impairment in severe traumatic brain injury patients with the Forced-choice Graphics Memory Test.

Introduction: The Forced-choice Graphics Memory Test (FGMT) is a newly developed measure to assess feigned cognitive impairment. This study investigated the ability and reliability of FGMT for identification of malingering in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Methods: The FGMT was administered to 40 healthy volunteers instructed to respond validly (Healthy Control, H-C), 40 healthy volunteers instructed to feign cognitive impairment (Healthy Malingering, H-M), 40 severe TBI patients who responded validly (TBI control, TBI-C), and 30 severe TBI patients who evidenced invalid performance (TBI malingering, TBI-M).

Initial Development of a Modified Trail Making Test for Individuals with Impaired Manual Functioning.

The Trail Making Test (TMT), a widely used neuropsychological test, is highly effective in detecting brain damage. A shortcoming of the test is that it requires drawing lines and thus is impractical for use with persons suffering manual impairment. The 3 studies described herein were designed to describe and evaluate a nonmanual Trail Making Test (NMTMT) that would be suitable for use with manually impaired individuals.

Effort in acute traumatic brain injury: considering more than pass/fail.

Purpose/objective: Performance validity is often conceptualized as a dichotomous process. Effort likely lies on a continuum, however, and psychologists' tendency to rely on pass/fail descriptors of one's effort may not be the only approach. The current study aims to show that when performance validity is considered on a continuum, it may provide clinical information related to cognitive functioning.

Prognostic importance of self-reported traits/problems/strengths and environmental barriers/facilitators for predicting participation outcomes in persons with traumatic brain injury: a systematic review.

Objective: To conduct a systematic review of the prognostic value of self-reported traits/problems/strengths and environmental barriers/facilitators for participation outcomes in persons with traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Data Sources: Articles published through August 15, 2013, obtained by conducting electronic searches of PubMed, PsycINFO, and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature databases and a review of reference lists of reviewed articles.

Study Selection: Reviewed articles were written in English and presented findings on adult humans with TBI, participation outcomes, and ≥ 1 self-reported trait/problem/strength (eg, depression, pain, coping style) and/or ≥ 1 environment barrier/facilitator (eg, social support, family functioning, access to services).

Sensitivity of the RBANS to acute traumatic brain injury and length of post-traumatic amnesia.

Objective: Although the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) has been shown to be a useful tool in evaluating the cognitive status of patients with dementia, stroke, schizophrenia and post-acute traumatic brain injury (TBI), no studies have examined its utility in an acute TBI setting. The current study investigates the RBANS' sensitivity to acute TBI, hypothesizing that the presence and severity of injury is predictive of worse RBANS performance.

Method: Neuropsychological testing was conducted an average of 6.

Making connections after brain injury: development and evaluation of a social peer-mentoring program for persons with traumatic brain injury.

Objective: To describe the development and implementation of a social peer-mentoring program for persons with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and to explore whether this program yielded increased social functioning outcomes compared with wait-list (WL)controls.

Design: Pilot randomized controlled study.

Participants: Community-dwelling individuals with TBI(12 matched with social peer mentors and 18 completing the WL condition).

Changes in supervision needs following participation in a residential post-acute brain injury rehabilitation programme.

Objective: Supervision needs typically increase following moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). Research assessing the impact of TBI residential rehabilitation programmes on supervision needs is limited.

Research Design: Prospective cross-sectional study.

Wisconsin Card Sorting Test: factor structure and relationship to productivity and supervision needs following severe traumatic brain injury.

Primary Objective: The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) has been demonstrated to have a relatively stable factor structure in traumatic brain injury (TBI) samples. What is less clear is whether the scores derived from WCST factors are related to functional outcomes. The purpose of the current study was to replicate the WCST factor structure in a sample with severe TBI, and to evaluate the relationship between the factor scores and outcome.

The simulated gambling paradigm applied to young adults: an examination of university students' performance.

Simulated gambling tasks have become popular as sensitive tools for identifying individuals with real-time impairment in decision making. Various clinical samples, especially patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, perform poorly on these tasks. The patients typically persist in choosing risky (disadvantageous) card decks instead of switching to safer (advantageous) decks.

Dual-task interference in right- and left-handers: typical laterality patterns are obtained despite reversal of baseline asymmetries.

Lateralized interference between concurrent cognitive and manual activities is used to infer cerebral hemisphere specialization for the cognitive activity. However, some evidence indicates that lateralized interference depends largely on manual asymmetry in the single-task (baseline) condition. To test the competing explanations, we asked 40 right-handed (RH) and 40 left-handed (LH) adults to key press and calculate concurrently.

Concurrent counting and typing: lateralized interference depends on a difference between the hands in motor skill.

In previous demonstrations of differences between left- and right-handers in dual-task performance, participants' hand preference has been confounded with asymmetry of manual skill. The present study was designed to disentangle those two factors as sources of lateralized interference in the concurrent-task paradigm. Forty-eight normal adults (24 females and 24 males) counted backward by ones or by twos while typing an easy or difficult sequence of letters with either hand.

Self-concept and quality of life following acquired brain injury: a pilot investigation.

Objective: To investigate through pilot exploration the relationships between depression, self-concept and perceived quality of life (QoL) in post-acute patients with acquired brain injury (ABI).

Methods: Nineteen patients with ABI were administered the Beck Depression Inventory-II and the Quality of Life Inventory, along with the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale-2 and the Head Injury Semantic Differential Scale, measures of self-concept. The relationships between these measures were explored using correlational analyses.

Use of community integration questionnaire (CIQ) to characterize changes in functioning for individuals with traumatic brain injury who participated in a post-acute rehabilitation programme.

Objective: Evaluate changes in community integration for survivors of traumatic brain injury (TBI) who participated in a post-acute rehabilitation programme.

Design: Cohort, prospective study investigating change from admission to post-discharge.

Participants: Individuals, the majority of whom were diagnosed with severe TBI, were placed into one of two groups as follows: (1).

Relationship of family functioning to progress in a post-acute rehabilitation programme following traumatic brain injury.

Primary Objective: To investigate the relationship of family functioning to patients' progress in a post-acute TBI rehabilitation programme.

Research Design: Cohort study investigating predictors of change from admission to follow-up.

Methods And Procedures: Caregivers of 37 persons with severe TBI consecutively admitted to a residential post-acute rehabilitation facility completed the Family Assessment Device (FAD) within a few weeks of admission.

A multidimensional measure of caregiving appraisal: validation of the Caregiver Appraisal Scale in traumatic brain injury.

Objective: To investigate the factor structure and concurrent validity of the Caregiver Appraisal Scale (CAS) in a sample of caregivers of adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Setting: Two sites: (1) Outpatient clinics associated with a comprehensive inpatient brain injury rehabilitation program and (2) a comprehensive residential postacute rehabilitation program in the Southern United States.

Performance on paced serial addition tasks indicates an associative network for calculation.

Although paced serial addition (PSA) tasks are considered to be tests of general information-processing capacity, recent work suggests that performance on such tasks is influenced by arithmetic-specific variables. We designed two visual PSA experiments to determine whether the performance of normal adults would support predictions derived from the cognitive psychology of calculation. Experiment 1 showed that mixing familiar (Arabic numeral) and less familiar (Roman numeral) stimulus formats reduced scores below the averaged scores for pure Arabic and Roman lists.

Neuropsychological assessment and the Disability Rating Scale (DRS): a concurrent validity study.

Assessment of current level of functioning among clients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) often guides the establishment of realistic outcome goals for post-acute rehabilitation. Further, data generated from neuropsychological testing provide a clinician with a better understanding of a client's pattern of cognitive strengths and weaknesses. The Disability Rating Scale (DRS) is commonly used by TBI rehabilitation facilities to assess a client's general level of functioning in terms of impairment, disability, and handicap.

Predictive validity of the Neurobehavioural Cognitive Status Examination (NCSE) in a post-acute rehabilitation setting.

Within the context of a post-acute rehabilitation setting, association and agreement between results from the Neurobehavioural Cognitive Status Examination (NCSE) and from the neuropsychological (NP) evaluation are examined. All participants (n = 48) had sustained a severe traumatic brain injury and NCSE testing preceded NP testing by an average of 1 month. A significant relationship and fair classification agreement (i.

Interhemispheric transfer of visual, auditory, tactile, and visuomotor information in children with hydrocephalus and partial agenesis of the corpus callosum.

Interhemispheric transfer was examined in 13 normal controls and in 13 children with hydrocephalus and partial agenesis of the corpus callosum involving a missing splenium associated with spina bifida meningomyelocele and aqueductal stenosis. Children with hydrocephalus demonstrated greater left visual-field superiority for forms indicative of difficulty in interhemispheric transfer of visual information. Interhemispheric transfer time (ITT) was somewhat longer in the children with hydrocephalus, but neither the ITT task nor the dichotic listening and tactile naming tasks provided clear evidence of difficulties in callosal transfer.

Paced serial addition: modality-specific and arithmetic-specific factors.

Tests of paced serial addition are used to detect diminished information-processing capacity. Nonetheless, performance might be influenced by modality-specific interference or by variables that specifically affect numerical processing. In a series of three experiments with normal adults, we manipulated, respectively, the modality in which addends were presented, the modality in which responses were produced, and the format in which visual addends were displayed.

The PPVT-R: validity as a quick screen of intelligence in a postacute rehabilitation setting for brain-injured adults.

The utility of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) as a surrogate for the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test-Revised (WAIS-R) was investigated in 61 brain-injured adult participants in a postacute rehabilitation setting. Idiographic comparison revealed substantial disagreement in clinical classification between the two instruments, and it is concluded that the PPVT-R is not a good surrogate for the WAIS-R for this purpose. In contrast, the PPVT-R was judged an adequate surrogate for the WAIS-R for the purpose of group comparison, as is common in biomedical research.

Webster's scattergram method: usefulness for assessing the asymmetry of interference between concurrent tasks.

Webster (1988) described a means of using scattergrams to represent the manual and nonmanual data from dual-task laterality experiments in a composite analysis. We used Webster's method and the conventional approach (i.e.

Asymmetric interference between concurrent tasks: an evaluation of competing explanatory models.

According to Kinsbourne's functional cerebral distance model, asymmetric interference between concurrent cognitive and manual tasks reflects the functional specialization of the cerebral hemispheres. However, alternative explanations include initial-values artifact (statistical bias model), motor asymmetry (manual dominance model), and a combination of functional cerebral distance and manual dominance (two-factor model). We evaluated the competing models in four experiments with right- and left-handed university students for whom manual dominance was in effect reversed by requiring the dominant hand to perform the more difficult manual task.

Adaptive and maladaptive utilization of color cues by patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease.

The ability to utilize color information was investigated in 12 patients with mild to moderate probable Alzheimer's Disease (DAT) and in 12 age- and gender-matched control subjects. All subjects underwent testing of visual acuity and color vision before being tested with a cognitive task consisting of four conditions (no color, color as attention enhancer, color as valid cue, color as distracter). Although the groups did not differ in visual acuity or color vision, patients with DAT were less accurate than controls in all four conditions of the cognitive task.

Effects of medical and surgical treatment on cerebral perfusion and cognition in patients with chronic cerebral ischemia.

The effects of medical treatment with and without cerebral revascularization procedures on cognition and cerebral blood flow were compared among 36 patients with extracranial occlusive cerebrovascular disease and cognitive impairments. Three comparable groups were studied. The first group (N = 18) received only medical treatment by control of risk factors for stroke (including hypertension, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia) and antiplatelet aggregant medication.