Childhood head injury and metacognitive processes in language and memory.
We studied the metacognitive functioning of children with severe and mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) and typically developing children. To test metacognition for memory, children were tested on a modified Judgment of Learning task. We found that children with severe TBI were impaired in their ability to predict recall of specific items prior to study-recall trials, but were unimpaired in predicting recall on a delayed test when the judgment was made after study-recall trials. Metacognitive knowledge impairment for memorial abilities was also demonstrated in children with severe TBI by poor estimation of memory span and exaggerated overconfidence in performance. To test metacognition within the language domain, we gave children a sentence anomaly detection and repair task in which spoken sentences were monitored for semantic anomalies. Children with severe TBI were impaired on the detection of semantic anomalies, especially under conditions of high memory load. However, metalinguistic knowledge in the form of adequate repairs of anomalous sentences, was preserved. Results are discussed in terms of effects of age at test and injury severity.
Cognitive Science Laboratory, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehbilitation, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA. ghanten@bcm.tmc.edu
Gerri
G
Hanten
Maureen
M
Dennis
Lifang
L
Zhang
Marcia
M
Barnes
Garland
G
Roberson
Jennifer
J
Archibald
James
J
Song
Harvey S
HS
Levin
D000293:Adolescent; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D015331:Cohort Studies; D006259:Craniocerebral Trauma / Q000145:classification / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D015600:Glasgow Coma Scale; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011930:Reaction Time; D014706:Verbal Learning