Schmitter-Edgecombe M E, Marks W, Fahy J F, Long C J
Department of Psychology, Memphis State University, Tennessee 38152.
J Clin Exp Neuropsychol. 1992 Sep;14(5):717-37. doi: 10.1080/01688639208402858.
The present study investigated the loci of the information-processing delay that characteristically follows severe closed-head injury (CHI). Sternberg's additive-factors logic was used to determine the effects of severe CHI on the central information-processing stages of stimulus encoding, memory comparison, and decision-making/response-selection. The task variables used to define the stages operationally were stimulus quality, memory set size, and stimulus-response compatibility. Twenty subjects who had sustained a severe CHI more than 18 months earlier and 20 matched control subjects completed a stimulus encoding by response selection task in Experiment 1, and a Sternberg high-speed memory scanning task in Experiment 2. The CHI group performed the stimulus encoding and decision-making/response-selection stages of processing significantly slower than did the control group. However, no significant group differences were found on the memory comparison stage, suggesting that memory comparison processes may be relatively intact in long-term patients with severe head trauma. The results are discussed in relation to a global and a late-specificity hypothesis of central processing deficits following severe CHI. The possibility that cognitive processes demanding less attention may be more resilient to injury is also considered.
本研究调查了重度闭合性颅脑损伤（CHI）后典型出现的信息处理延迟的位点。采用斯滕伯格的相加因素逻辑来确定重度CHI对刺激编码、记忆比较以及决策/反应选择等中枢信息处理阶段的影响。用于从操作上定义这些阶段的任务变量分别是刺激质量、记忆集大小和刺激-反应兼容性。20名在18个月前遭受过重度CHI的受试者以及20名匹配的对照受试者在实验1中完成了一项刺激编码与反应选择任务，并在实验2中完成了一项斯滕伯格高速记忆扫描任务。CHI组在刺激编码和决策/反应选择处理阶段的表现明显慢于对照组。然而，在记忆比较阶段未发现显著的组间差异，这表明重度颅脑外伤的长期患者的记忆比较过程可能相对完整。结合重度CHI后中枢处理缺陷的整体和晚期特异性假说对结果进行了讨论。还考虑了对注意力需求较少的认知过程可能对损伤更具恢复力的可能性。
