Measuring subjective clustering of verbal information after moderate-severe traumatic brain injury: a preliminary study

ABSTRACT

Background

There is no agreed upon measure of subjective clustering for clinical use in patients following moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Objective

This study investigated whether measures of subjective clustering, subjective organization (SO) and adjusted ratio of clustering (ARC), were appropriate for use in patients following moderate-severe TBI.

Methods

Twenty participants with moderate-severe TBI in the chronic stage of recovery and 20 control participants recalled a list of unrelated words over six trials. The authors assessed if the SO and ARC measures could discriminate the groups’ ability to subjectively cluster the words. The authors also examined whether the SO and ARC measures correlated with recall and learning rate, and if combining the measures improved the predictive accuracy.

Results

Participants with moderate-severe TBI performed significantly worse on the SO measure, but there were no group differences regarding the ARC measure. The SO measure positively correlated with recall, but not learning rate. The ARC measure did not positively correlate with recall or learning rate, and combining the measures did not enhance the predictive accuracy.

Conclusions

The SO measure is likely an appropriate candidate for clinical use. However, there are problems with the ARC measure that limit its use as a clinical tool.

KEYWORDS:

• Subjective clustering
• memory
• moderate-severe traumatic brain injury
• traumatic brain injury
• subjective organization
• head injury

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.