Memory for social media images following traumatic brain injury

ABSTRACT

Primary objective

An emerging body of research examines the role of computer-mediated communication in supporting social connection in persons with traumatic brain injury (TBI). We examine the cognitive impacts of engaging with images posted to social media for persons with moderate-severe TBI.

Research design

Prior work shows that after viewing social media posts, adults have better memory for posts when they generate a comment about the post. We examined if persons with TBI experience a memory benefit for commented-upon social media images similar to non-injured comparison participants.

Methods and procedures

53 persons with moderate-to-severe TBI and 52 non-injured comparison participants viewed arrays of real social media images and were prompted to comment on some of them. After a brief delay, a surprise two-alternative forced choice recognition memory test measured memory for these images.

Main outcomes and results

Persons with TBI remembered social media images at above-chance levels and experienced a commenting-related memory boost much like non-injured comparison participants.

Conclusions

These findings add to a growing literature on the potential benefits of social media use in individuals with TBI and point to the benefits of active engagement for memory in social media contexts in TBI.

KEYWORDS:

• Traumatic brain injury
• computer-mediated communication
• social media
• memory
• generation

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by NIDCD 1R01DC017926 to Melissa C. Duff and Sarah Brown-Schmidt. Thank you to Maia Regan, who assisted with the qualitative data analysis. We thank Kim Walsh and Nirav Patel for collecting the data.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The raw, de-identified data is available at https://osf.io/vcehf/.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The research procedures were approved by Vanderbilt University Human Research Protections Program and all participants consented prior to participation in this research.

Authors’ contributions

JZ, KL, and SBS designed experiments. MCD oversaw participant recruitment and data collection. SBS analyzed the data. SBS and MCD secured funding. KL, SBS, and MCD wrote the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Notes

1. A post-hoc analysis revealed that overall accuracy on test trials (see procedure for details) was similar for participants who completed the study on their own (65%) vs. with a research assistant present on a Zoom call (68%); this difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.055).

2. A post-hoc analysis prompted by a reviewer revealed that there was not a significant correlation between time post injury in the TBI group, and accuracy for either target (r = .13, p = 0.35) or context images (r = .04, p = 0.79).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [NIDCD 1R01DC017926-01A1].