Abstract

RAMIREZ FLORES, Maura Jazmín  and  OSTROSKY, Feggy. Cognitive Flexibility after Traumatic Brain Injury. Acta de investigación psicol [online]. 2012, vol.2, n.1, pp.582-591. ISSN 2007-4719.

Cognitive flexibility is the ability to make changes between different responses, either of thought or action, depending on the demands of the situation. Like a crucial process of executive functions, can be extremely susceptible to damage as in the case of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Approximated a third of the population have a secondary brain damage due to TBI. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance on tasks of cognitive flexibility in a group of patients with TBI. Were evaluated 25 patients with TBI, 10 Moderate-TBI (age M = 34.60; education: M=14.70) and 15 with Severe-TBI (age: M= 29.73; education: M=13.88) matched with a healthy control group by age, sex, and education. Were applied 4 tests of cognitive flexibility: Verbal Fluency (verbs), Semantic Classification (animals), the Tower of Hanoi (3 and 4 desks) and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), that are included in the Battery of Executive Functions and Frontal Lobes. Analysis with one-way ANOVA to compare the three groups showed that the Severe-TBI group had a lower performance on all tasks, mainly in semantic classification and WCST, followed by TCE-Moderate, this last group had a similar performance to control group for this reason few significant statistical differences were found. Overall patients required more time to perform the tasks, made more perseverative errors and had difficulty in shifting between cognitive set, making that their performance significantly decrease, also this is evidence of a poor cognitive flexibility. In conclusion the severity of TBI are related with a poor performance on executive functions, negatively influencing in learning, to generate new strategies to solve a problem, in divided attention and the capacity to process new information. The study findings will allow the selection of appropriate assessment tasks for patients with TBI and influence on the generation of cognitive and behavioral intervention.

Keywords : Traumatic brain injury; Cognitive flexibility; Verbal fluency; Semantic classification; WCST.