Cognitive control in closed head injury: context maintenance dysfunction or prepotent response inhibition deficit?

The authors contrasted 2 potential explanations for the cognitive control deficits observed in closed head injury (CHI): a prepotent response inhibition deficit or a deficit in context maintenance, defined as the guidance of appropriate responding by task-relevant information. Healthy and CHI participants performed the traditional card Stroop task and a single-trial Stroop task sensitive to context maintenance deficits. As predicted by a context maintenance deficit, moderate to severe CHI participants showed higher error rates in the single-trial Stroop task only, and only when task instructions had to be maintained over a long delay. Moreover, context maintenance impairment and generalized slowing were both related to reports of daily functioning in CHI participants. Thus, context maintenance could be a useful framework for characterizing cognitive control deficits in CHI.