Retraining social and adaptive living skills in severely head injured adults.
To assess the effectiveness of an intensive, multidisciplinary rehabilitation program upon social and adaptive living skills, and to study the relationship of cognitive functioning to those skills, 10 severely head-injured adults who were treated in the program were matched with 10 waiting-list control subjects. The mean improvement shown by the treated subjects in social and adaptive living skills were all in the expected direction and all greater than the mean changes of control subjects, though not significantly so. Cognitive changes showed no consistent patterns. A striking bimodal distribution in the results for social and adaptive living skills suggests that future researchers should consider employing single-subject methodology coupled with a knowledge of the patterns and events that occur during each individual's recovery sequence.
Blair
C D
CD
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe 85287, USA.
Lanyon
R I
RI