Citation

Park NW, Conrod B, Hussain Z, Murphy KJ, Rewilak D, Black SE. Neurocase 2003; 9(1): 51-62.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, York University, and Department of Psychology, St. John's Rehabilitation Hospital, Toronto, Canada. npark@yorku.ca

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1076/neur.9.1.51.14371

PMID

16210225

Abstract

The current study evaluated the effectiveness of a rehabilitation program developed to assist individuals such as AM who have impaired social and risk judgement. AM's difficulties developed after a severe traumatic brain injury that resulted in bilateral frontal and temporal lobe damage including damage to the amygdala. Previous work (Park et al., 2001) established that AM had impaired automatic processing of negative, but not positive evaluative information, and relatively spared processing of both types of evaluative information when using controlled or strategic processing. In the Strategic Evaluation of Alternatives (SEA) treatment program, AM was trained to compensate for his impairments by explicitly retrieving positive and negative attributes associated with potential actions prior to performing them. The SEA treatment focused specifically on improving AM's ability to obtain financial compensation for his work-related activities. Results showed improved performance on work-related activities and evidence of generalization. Analyses suggested that the process underlying improved performance was compensatory rather than restorative in nature. We discuss the implications of these results for the development of rehabilitation treatment for patients with impaired social and risk judgement.

Language: en