Assessment of distractibility in auditory comprehension after traumatic brain injury

In a simulated functional task involving comprehension of a spoken passage, the performance of 20 traumatically brain-injured and 14 non-brain-injured control patients was compared under conditions which included the presence and absence of competing vocal stimuli. The subjects heard 10 target paragraphs which were approximately 1 minute in length. Five of these paragraphs were transmitted without any interference, while the other five were presented with distraction caused by a second voice reading a different paragraph with equal volume and intensity. Based on the answers to subsequent multiple-choice questions, the traumatically brain-injured subjects had significantly more difficulty comprehending the target passages in the presence of the interfering or competing passages compared to control subjects. The results of this study suggest the need for specific rehabilitation programmes to aid brain-injured persons in improving their auditory comprehension in everyday situations where distracting or competing auditory stimuli are present.