The effects of stimulus modality on interference and recognition performance following brain injury

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of stimulus modality on recall after interference and recognition performance of 31 patients with moderate-to- severe closed head injury (CHI) and 31 normal participants. A multi-trial free recall paradigm incorporating three modality conditions (auditory, visual, and simultaneous auditory plus visual) was implemented. The presence of an interference list resulted in a significantly greater decline in word recall performance for the participants with CHI than for the normal participants. Visual presentation of information was the most resistant to interference compared to auditory presentation or auditory plus visual presentation. Recognition performance was superior to free recall. Furthermore, visually presented information (with or without simultaneous auditory presentation of names) resulted in better recognition performance than auditory presentation alone. Finally, there were no group differences in the use of intrusion words and repetitions during this multi-trial free recall paradigm.