Question-asking strategies after severe closed head injury

This investigation examined problem solving behaviors in survivors of severe closed head injury. Fourteen patients and 10 neurologically intact controls were administered the Twenty Questions procedure, requiring them to guess items the examiner was thinking of in a picture array. Relative to controls, survivors required more trials to guess the items and utilized a strategy characterized by attention to the individual pictures rather than to their shared conceptual features. The importance of problem solving impairments to neurobehavioral outcome after head injury is discussed.