Semantic and phonological retrieval in traumatic brain injury

ABSTRACT

Background: Identifying associations or links between encoded stimuli can influence whether those stimuli are successfully retrieved at a later time.

Aims: The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of semantic and phonological lexical targets on recall in individuals with mild to moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI) and to identify if individuals with TBI form associations when recalling related information.

Methods & Procedures: Forty-seven individuals, 14 with TBI, completed the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) word retrieval paradigm in which six digitally recorded word lists were presented auditorily. Three of the lists contained semantically related words and three contained phonologically related words.

Outcomes & Results: Non-brain-injured (NBI) participants recalled significantly more phonological and semantic stimuli than participants with TBI. Phonologically related stimuli resulted in increased intrusions for both TBI and NBI participants. For participants with TBI, age and time post injury were not significantly correlated with performance on the DRM paradigm, though the number of semantically related items recalled was moderately correlated with performance on standardised assessments. Though TBI participants recalled fewer words, they appeared to utilise recall strategies in a manner similar to NBI peers with intrusion data suggesting that both groups were forming associations between words.

Conclusions: Individuals with mild to moderate TBI successfully identify associations between encoded stimuli and used those associations when recalling target information.

KEYWORDS:

• Traumatic brain injury
• retrieval
• semantic
• phonological
• memory

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by support from the American Speech-Language Hearing Association Students Preparing for Academic-Research Careers award.

Specials thanks to Alex Taylor, MA, and Natalya Rich, MA, for aiding with data collection, Li Sheng, PhD, for sharing knowledge and aiding in experimental design, Michael J. Mahometa, PhD, for his help with data analysis, David Balota, PhD, for sharing his resources and insight, and the Mary Lee Foundation for sharing resources and knowledge.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by support from the American Speech-Language Hearing Association Students Preparing for Academic-Research Careers award.