Recent attention has begun to focus on the impact of childhood traumatic brain injury (TBI) on the family. This study examined the impact of mild to moderate childhood TBI on parental ratings of well and injured siblings' behaviours in relation to well siblings' ratings of the impact of injury and the sibling relationship. Parents of 10 children with TBI and 10 children with orthopaedic injury rated both injured and well siblings' behaviours using the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL). Well siblings completed the Sibling Impact Questionnaire (SIQ) and Sibling Relationship Questionnaire (SRQ). Results indicated that children with TBI exhibited significantly more externalising and total behaviours than children with orthopaedic injury, while well siblings of children with TBI exhibited more internalising behaviours than siblings of children with orthopaedic injury. Well siblings' ratings of the impact of the injury and sibling relationship did not differ significantly across groups. The behaviours of well siblings and their ratings of injury impact and sibling relationship are examined in relation to the behaviours of the injured siblings for the two groups. The implications of the findings are examined in terms of the need to involve siblings in the rehabilitation process.

The assessment of executive functioning 1 month following a mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) is minimal, inconsistent and difficult to integrate. Four executive processes of checking, inhibition, sharing and integrating were examined using an empirically derived assessment protocol based on executive process delineation (Baddeley & Della Sala, 1998). This protocol was administered to individuals at 1 month post-MTBI (n = 22), and a group of orthopaedic controls (n = 15) matched for age, sex, years of education and occupational status. Contrary to expectations, only one significant difference between the two groups occurred on the dual-task Telephone Search while Counting (p < .006), which was considered a measure of the executive process of sharing. Methodological limitations such as a small and heterogeneous sample may have influenced the findings in this study. The results provide support for the utility of a theoretically driven approach to executive functioning to aid the integration of neuropsychological results, and highlight the need for carefully controlled research at 1 month following a MTBI to further delineate the recovery process.

Culturally-appropriate neuropsychological assessment is important if we wish to gather valid information about the abilities of individuals from minority cultural groups. This study compares 20 Maori and 20 white New Zealanders (16–30 years) from a low socioeconomic group on a range of neuropsychological tests, some adapted in an attempt to increase their appropriateness for Maori. Results generally support the hypotheses that Maori score more poorly on tests that rely heavily on formal western education and concepts, and score as well as or better than the white New Zealanders on tests that rely on concepts valued by Maori (e.g., visuospatial abilities), or have some Maori content. The test adaptations in this study might provide ideas for test adaptation for other cultural groups.

This study aimed to evaluate the influence of cognitive demand on prospective-memory in individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) using a dual-task paradigm. Fourteen individuals with severe TBI and 14 matched controls were required to undertake two tasks. A lexical-decision task was used as an ongoing task and had two levels of cognitive demand (viz., low and high). The event-based prospective-memory task involved performing a specific action whenever a target stimulus appeared during the ongoing task. The Letter-Number Sequencing Test, the Tower of London and the Controlled Oral Word Association Test were also administered to assess the relationship between prefrontal lobe functions and prospective memory. As hypothesised, participants in the TBI group performed more poorly than participants in the control group on the prospective-memory task in the high but not in the low demand condition. There were significant correlations between prospective-memory task performance and scores on the Letter-Number Sequencing Test and the Controlled Oral Word Association Test. These findings help to clarify the nature of prospective-memory impairment in individuals with TBI and support the involvement of prefrontal processes in prospective remembering.

Qualitative analysis of neuropsychological instruments has been a long tradition in neuropsychological assessment. This study extended this type of analysis to the Matrix Reasoning (MR) subtest of the WAIS-III. The study compared the performance of TBI participants on the item types identified within the MR subtest (i.e., pattern completion, classification, analogy and serial reasoning) with a group of normal controls. MR items were classified into categories (as defined respectively by the Psychological Corporation and by our own research definition). Ninety-three non brain-injured control and 72 brain injured control participants were included in the study. One way analysis of variance indicated that the TBI group performed significantly worse than the non brain-injured group the MR performance overall as well as for both the Psychological Corporation classification and on the research defined categories. Within group analysis revealed that both groups performed significantly differently across the item categories with the most difficult categories being analogy and serial reasoning for the research defined categories and the classification and serial reasoning categories for the Psychological Corporation-defined groups. The results of the study indicate that an item type analysis of the MR performance may further contribute to the qualitative aspects of diagnostic formulation.

The present study aimed to determine whether including a sensitive test of immediate and delayed recall would improve the diagnostic validity of the Rapid Screen of Concussion (RSC) in mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) versus orthopaedic clinical samples. Two studies were undertaken. In Study 1, the performance of 156 mTBI and 145 orthopaedic participants was analysed to identify the number of individuals who performed at ceiling on the verbal memory subtest of the RSC, as this test required immediate and delayed recall of only five words. A second aim was to determine the sensitivity and specificity levels of the RSC. Study 2 aimed to examine whether replacement of the verbal memory subtest with the 12-word Hopkins Verbal Learning Test (HVLT) could improve the sensitivity of the RSC in a new sample of 26 mTBI and 30 orthopaedic participants. Both studies showed that orthopaedic participants outperformed mTBI participants on each of the selected measures. Study 1 showed that 14% of mTBI participants performed at ceiling on the immediate and 21.2% on delayed recall test. Performance on the original battery yielded a sensitivity of 82%, specificity of 80% and overall correct classification of 81.5% participants. In Study 2, inclusion of the HVLT improved sensitivity to a level of 88.5%, decreased specificity to a level of 70% and resulted in an overall classification rate of 80%. It was concluded that although inclusion of the five-word subtest in the RSC can successfully distinguish concussed from non-concussed individuals, use of the HVLT in this protocol yields a more sensitive measure of subtle cognitive deficits following mTBI.