Dl. Cooke et Dh. Kausler, CONTENT MEMORY AND TEMPORAL MEMORY FOR ACTIONS IN SURVIVORS OF TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY, Neuropsychology, development, and cognition. Section A, Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology, 17(1), 1995, pp. 90-99
Memory for performed actions, a rehearsal-independent form of memory,
was compared to verbal memory in 30 survivors of traumatic brain injur
y (TBI) and 30 demographically matched controls. Subjects were tested
on recognition and recall memory for the content of recently performed
actions in the laboratory, as well as the ability to reconstruct the
temporal order in which the actions were performed. Each subject perfo
rmed actions under incidental and intentional memory instructions. Hal
f of the subjects performed 12 actions, the other half 24 actions, wit
h an equal number of usual and unusual actions in each list. Verbal me
mory was assessed with paired-associate and temporal order tests, Alth
ough recall was more proficient overall for the control compared to th
e brain-injured subjects on both content and temporal memory for actio
ns, memory for actions was better than verbal memory in both groups. B
oth groups performed better overall on the short compared to the long
list of actions and recalled unusual actions better than usual actions
. The rehearsal-independent nature of action memory was supported, wit
h no advantage for the intentional instruction. It is proposed that a
retrieval deficit may be in part responsible for deficits in memory fo
r actions following TBI. However, preserved ability to benefit from th
e abundant contextual cues available through motor actions may account
for the better recall of actions compared to words.