This article aimed to review the assessment and treatment of prospective memory impairment in individuals with traumatic brain injury. The three assessment techniques reviewed included questionnaires, psychological tests, and experimental procedures. Because interest in this area is relatively new, not many assessment techniques have been specifically developed to assess the various constructs of prospective memory. Of these, most lack a firm theoretical basis, adequate norms, and strong psychometric properties. Rehabilitative techniques, based on remedial and compensatory approaches, were then evaluated. Intervention methods that show promise include a prospective memory training approach, diary or memory notebook use, and electronic aids. Nevertheless, there is a need for further controlled trials with larger sample sizes to more thoroughly evaluate these methods. Self-awareness of memory impairment and generalisation of gains from treatment are another two issues identified as important for assessing and treating prospective memory impairment.

In December 1999, Greener, Enderby and Whurr reported the findings of their Cochrane review to assess the effects of formal speech and language therapy for people with aphasia following stroke. They concluded that aphasia therapy had not been shown to be “clearly effective or clearly ineffective within a randomised controlled trial (RCT)” (p. 1). Their conclusion led to much discussion among speech pathologists with some expressing grave concern that the outcome of the review would undermine the provision of services for people with aphasia and their carers. In this paper, evidence for the effectiveness of aphasia therapy that has been provided by published systematic reviews is critically explored. Clearly, challenges remain with respect to provision of evidence-based aphasia therapy. However, the weight of evidence accumulated over the years and synthesised in systematic reviews supports the broad conclusion that aphasia therapy is effective.

Duncan's theory allows that executive function may be represented by a central and general construct of intelligence which was originally described by Spearman (Spearman, 1946). This theoretical critique discusses the three planks of evidence which appear to support this proposal: (1), the finding that intra correlations between “executive” tests are low and in one study equivalent to those with non-executive tasks, (2), that tests which are seen as most representative of Spearman's G may be used to identify patients with frontal lobe lesions and executive dysfunction and (3), the finding that functional neuroimaging studies which have used disparate tasks may show a similar region of activation within the prefrontal cortex. The evidence for these three findings is discussed in terms of their ability to support Duncan's theory.

The aim of this study was to develop and pilot a posttraumatic amnesia scale (PTA) scale for children aged between four and six years. The scale consists of seven orientation questions and five memory items modelled on the Westmead PTA Scale which assesses posttraumatic amnesia in children from eight years onwards and adults. The sample consisted of 45 four-year-olds, 82 five-year-olds and 49 six-year-old children from a variety of cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Children were recruited from hospitals, kindergartens and schools. Results were analysed across age groups using means and standard deviations. The orientation and memory items were analysed separately as well as in combination. Early analyses indicate that the majority of normal children in the four to 6 year age group can answer most of the orientation questions correctly and remember the memory stimuli from day to day. The results indicate that the Starship PTA Scale is suitable for young children aged 4 to 6 years. It is simple and quick to administer and utilises an operational definition of posttraumatic amnesia in terms of measuring continuous memory.

The present study investigated the ability of cerebrovascular accident (CVA) patients to perceive emotions portrayed by realistic stimuli. Statistical analyses demonstrated that CVA patients with damage to either the right or left cerebral hemisphere performed, on average, as well as controls did in perceiving emotions. However, a case study of one patient suggested that there may be a subset of CVA patients with right parieto-occipital damage who have deficits in the perception of negative emotions. The performance of this participant also indicated that deficits in emotion perception are ameliorated to some extent when patients are provided with realistic, complex stimuli that include a range of auditory and visual cues.

Patients with acute brain lesions often demonstrate dramatic forms of visual neglect; however their unstable medical conditions and rapidly changing neglect make it impossible to carry out rigorous experimentation to test theories of neglect. Careful assessment of their disorders can, however, inform rehabilitation strategies, and stimulate tentative neglect hypotheses that can later be tested more rigourously on the much rarer patients who have persisting neglect. The neglect behaviours of two patients with acute lesions are described in terms of environment-centred and object-based frames of reference. TT, with a right parietal glioma, has difficulty describing unexpected details on the left sides of pictures, in contrast to SM, with a right frontal abscess, who describes pictures accurately. Both patients, however, show left-sided neglect when copying pictures. When asked to copy daisy pictures, including half daisies, TT copied half daisy heads, including half of the half daisies, but SM missed only whole daisy heads to the left of other daisies. Their different responses to these daisy pictures is tentatively explained in terms of their ability to perceive whether or not half daisies appear “ridiculous”. SM also embellished the right sides of her drawings, suggesting an interaction between this dysexecutive behaviour and neglect.