Intactness of inhibitory attentional mechanisms following severe closed-head injury

Attentional problems are a common sequelae of closed-head injury (CHI). Res earch in the area of selective attention has pointed to the role of inhibit ory mechanisms in the suppression of irrelevant information. In the current study, a negative priming paradigm was used to assess the inhibitory mecha nisms of individuals suffering from a severe CHI. Twenty participants with severe CHIs (greater than 1 year postinjury) and 20 matched controls comple ted a negative priming task, as well as several other standardized tests of cognitive functioning. Within the negative priming task, 2 conditions were used to elicit information regarding facilitation by attended and ignored information and 1 condition was used to elicit inhibition of ignored inform ation, as compared with a neutral control condition. Despite poorer perform ances on several tests of attention, there were no significant differences in the amount of inhibition displayed by the CHI participants as compared w ith the controls. Findings suggest that inhibitory processing deficits may not underlie the selective attention difficulties commonly seen following a severe CHI.