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Is there a central executive deficit after severe head injury?

University Department of Rehabilitation, University of Southampton

RM Pickering

Department of Computing and Statistics, University of Southampton

BA Wilson

MRC Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge

This study examines whether head-injured people have a central executive deficit, and if this is correlated with performance on frontal-lobe tests. Twenty-five severely head-injured (HI) patients and 25 matched controls performed five tasks:(1) visual-motor tracking, (2) digit span, (3) visual-motor tracking with verbal encouragement from the experimenter, (4) visual-motor tracking whilst holding a conversation with the experimenter, and (5) visual-motor tracking with a simultaneous digit-span task. In addition, all subjects were assessed on three frontal-lobe tests. HI patients were significantly worse overall than controls. The most striking difference was in tracking with conversation, in which HI patients (but not controls) showed a marked decrement in performance. Scores from tests of frontal lobe functioning were significantly correlated with (1) tracking during conversation and (2) tracking with digits. The results are broadly consistent with a central executive deficit in head-injured patients.

Clinical Rehabilitation, Vol. 6, No. 2, 133-140 (1992)
DOI: 10.1177/026921559200600207


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