Assessment of strategic self-regulation in traumatic brain injury: its relationship to injury severity and psychosocial outcome.
Standard neuropsychological tests administered in a constrained and artificial laboratory environment are often insensitive to the real-life deficits faced by patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI). The Revised Strategy Application Test (R-SAT) creates an unstructured environment in the laboratory in which environmental cues and internal habits oppose the most efficient strategy, thus mimicking the real-life situations that are problematic for patients with TBI. In this study, R-SAT performance was related both to severity of TBI (i.e., depth of coma) sustained 2-3 years earlier and to quality of life outcome as assessed by the Sickness Impact Profile. This relationship held after accounting for variance attributable to TBI-related slowing and inattention. These findings support the validity of the R-SAT and suggest that behavioral correlates of quality of life outcome in TBI can be assessed in the laboratory with unstructured tasks.
Levine
B
B
Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care and University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. blevine@rotman-baycrest.on.ca
Dawson
D
D
Boutet
I
I
Schwartz
M L
ML
Stuss
D T
DT
D000208:Acute Disease; D000328:Adult; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis*; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology; D003463:Cues; D004777:Environment; D005260:Female; D015600:Glasgow Coma Scale; D006706:Homeostasis / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012917:Social Adjustment; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed