EVERYDAY PLANNING DIFFICULTIES FOLLOWING TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY - A ROLE FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY

The present study examines the role of autobiographical memory in desc ribing how to perform both open-ended and closed everyday activities i n 12 patients suffering traumatic brain injury and 12 aged-matched con trols. The frequency thigh versus low) of performing the activities wa s also manipulated. Patients seemed less well able to benefit from usi ng specific autobiographical memories; they reported using significant ly fewer specific autobiographical memories for describing how to perf orm low-frequency activities and significantly more such memories for high-frequency activities compared with controls. The quality of their descriptions was also significantly poorer for the open-ended activit ies. Finally, significant correlations were found between the quality of the descriptions and the retrieval of specific autobiographical mem ories for the controls only. The importance of the retrieval of specif ic autobiographical memories for everyday problem-solving is discussed .