ATTENTIONAL PERFORMANCE OF CHILDREN WITH TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY - A QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE-ANALYSIS OF DIGIT SPAN

Previous studies have indicated that digit span performance is not par ticularly sensitive to the effects of traumatic brain injury (Baddeley & Warrington, 1970; Brooks, 1975; Sterne, 1969). However clinical lor e posits poorer backward vs. forward performance compared to normals d ue to the greater attentional demands of the backward task. This study examined qualitative aspects of Digit Span performance including forw ard/backward span discrepancies and error patterns in children with tr aumatic brain injury (n = 20) and normals (n = 19). The hypothesis of greater forward/backward discrepancy with traumatic brain injury was n ot supported Children with traumatic brain injury make a significantly greater number of preceiling errors than normals, consistent with oth er findings of increased performance variability. Preceiling errors ar e errors that occur in trials prior to the two failed trials resulting in discontinuation of the task In addition, cognitive correlates of e rror types, such as WISC-R factor scores, were significantly different between groups. The results of this study suggest that a more detaile d analysis of performance on attentional tasks previously described as resilient to brain injury may shed further light on the nature of acq uired attentional deficits.