Assessment of memory self-awareness following traumatic brain injury

Abstract

Objective: To examine memory self-awareness abilities in individuals with moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) using both ‘online assessment’ and ‘offline assessment’ methodologies.

Design and methods: Participants were 23 individuals with TBI and 23 controls matched on age, education and sex. Online assessment of memory was assessed by comparing the predicted amount of information participants expected that they would remember following trial 1, trial 5 and a 20-minute delay with actual memory performance on list-learning and visuospatial memory tests. Offline assessment of memory involved contrasting self-ratings provided by TBI participants about their everyday memory functioning with ratings from knowledgeable informants and with performance on objective memory tests.

Results: Individuals with TBI displayed poorer recall for newly learned information than control participants, but no significant group differences emerged in the online assessment of memory self-awareness. The offline assessment comparisons similarly demonstrated that the individuals with TBI exhibited accurate awareness for their everyday memory performances.

Conclusions: These findings suggest intact memory self-awareness following moderate-to-severe TBI during the early stages of recovery (2–10 months post-injury).

• Traumatic brain injury
• memory awareness
• metamemory
• metacognition

Acknowledgements

This study was partially supported by grant #R01 NS47690 from NINDS. We would like to thank Randi McDonald, Scott Creamer, Shital Pavawalla, Jennifer McWilliams, Michelle Nuegen, Matthew Wright and Ellen Woo for their support in coordinating data collection. We give an additional thanks to the participants and the members of the Head Injury Research Team for their assistance in gathering and scoring the data.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest.