Intactness of inhibitory attentional mechanisms following severe closed-head injury

Attentional problems are a common sequelae of closed-head injury (CHI). Research in the area of selective attention has pointed to the role of inhibitory mechanisms in the suppression of irrelevant information. In the current study, a negative priming paradigm was used to assess the inhibitory mechanisms of individuals suffering from a severe CHI. Twenty participants with severe CHIs (greater than 1 year postinjury) and 20 matched controls completed 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 information, as compared with a neutral control condition. Despite poorer performances on several tests of attention, there were no significant differences in the amount of inhibition displayed by the CHI participants as compared with the controls. Findings suggest that inhibitory processing deficits may not underlie the selective attention difficulties commonly seen following a severe CHI.