title: Attentional control ten years post-childhood traumatic brain injury: the impact of lesion presence, location, and severity in adolescence and early adulthood.
abstract: The relationship between brain injury and attentional control (AC) long after a childhood traumatic brain injury (TBI) has received limited investigation. The aim of this article was to investigate the impact that lesion presence, location, and severity has on AC in a group of young persons who had sustained a moderate to severe TBI 10 years earlier during childhood. The participants in this study were a subset of a larger 10-year, follow-up assessment comprised of 31 persons in late adolescence and early adulthood (21 males), with a mean age at testing of 15.4 years (standard error 0.6; range 10.7-21.2 years). Analyses revealed that in regard to AC abilities, the presence of a lesion(s) appears to have a differential effect depending on the testing measure used. When using standardized testing with subtests of the TEA-ch, no differences in performance between those with and those without a lesion at 10 years post-TBI were found. On standardized behavioral measures such as parental reports of perceived AC (Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function), however, the presence of a lesion was found to have a detrimental effect on the ability to self-regulate and monitor behavior in late adolescence and the early stages of adulthood. We discuss these results and propose that there is a network of brain regions associated with AC, and generalized lesions have the greatest influence on such abilities.
authors.affiliation: Department of Child Neuropsychology, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute , Melbourne, Victoria, Australia .
authors.forename: Janine M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Cooper
authors.forename: Cathy
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Catroppa
authors.forename: Miriam H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Beauchamp
authors.forename: Serem
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Eren
authors.forename: Celia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Godfrey
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ditchfield
authors.forename: Vicki A
authors.initials: VA
authors.lastname: Anderson
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001288:Attention; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000150:complications* / Q000473:pathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D055815:Young Adult