Memory rehabilitation - recent developments and future directions

Memory impairment is a frequent effect of different forms of brain injuries and may be even more handicapping than severe physical problems. The purpose of this article is to critically review empirical studies on the effectiveness of different procedures of memory rehabilitation. Traditionally memory rehabilitation has focused on direct training of memory functioning. The problem of these programs is that training effects hardly generalize to patients' everyday life memory problems. As a consequence of this transfer problem, strategies have been developed (method of vanishing cues, errorless learning) which are restricted to the aim of teaching patients domain specific knowledge. Another aspect of memory rehabilitation concentrates on coping with memory impairment. This may be done by alleviating demands on the patient and by including external resources into the process of recovery. On the other hand, teaching the patient to actively cope with memory related difficulties, has recently become an essential objective of memory rehabilitation. In order to pursue this aim, traditional mnemonic techniques are embedded into training of problem solving abilities and metamemory knowledge. Future perspectives and questions open to research are outlined for each of the different procedures.