ASSOCIATION LEARNING IN THE ACUTE CONFUSIONAL STATE

The usefulness of cognitive rehabilitative treatment in the acute stag es after brain injury seems questionable because patients in severe ac ute confusional state early after coma clinically seem unable to learn and store new information. Therefore, the capability of patients in a cute confusional state to learn and retain associative information was assessed. On two occasions pairs of simple nouns were presented to si x patients in severe acute confusional state. Stimuli were presented r epeatedly either in written form only or with additional pictorial rep resentations. Immediate and 20 minutes delayed recall was measured. Pa tients in acute confusional state were able to learn progressively mor e word pairs across several presentations. They retained some informat ion over an interval of 20 minutes. In addition, they learned and reme mbered pictorially supported associations better than pure verbal asso ciations. Patients in severe acute confusional state may retain some e xplicit information and may profit from an imagery mnemonic aid. These results were not expected on the basis of clinical findings alone and they have potential implications for the care of patients in acute co nfusional state.