Everyday planning difficulties following traumatic brain injury: a role for autobiographical memory

The present study examines the role of autobiographical memory in describing how to perform both open-ended and closed everyday activities in 12 patients suffering traumatic brain injury and 12 aged-matched controls. The frequency (high versus low) of performing the activities was also manipulated. Patients seemed less well able to benefit from using specific autobiographical memories; they reported using significantly fewer specific autobiographical memories for describing how to perform low-frequency activities and significantly more such memories for high-frequency activities compared with controls. The quality of their descriptions was also significantly poorer for the open-ended activities. Finally, significant correlations were found between the quality of the descriptions and the retrieval of specific autobiographical memories for the controls only. The importance of the retrieval of specific autobiographical memories for everyday problem-solving is discussed.