Central Executive Deficit and Response to Operant Conditioning Methods

Behaviour problems may exclude some patients with severe brain injury from rehabilitation. However, rehabilitation potential can be achieved when a behaviour modification approach is used. Not all patients respond favourably to the reinforcement, extinction and tim e-out interventions frequently cited in the literature. In this study neuropsychological factors are examined in an attempt to account for poor response. Tests of general intelligence, memory and frontal lobe functioning were poor at discriminating between brain injured “responders” and “non-responders”. However, performance on a dual-task experiment did discriminate them. Controls and brain injured responders were able to allocate attentional resources appropriately when confronted with the need to monitor multiple events, while non-responders could not. Performance of the non-responders was taken as evidence of impairm ent of the central executive component of working mem ory. This inability to monitor two concurrent events results in functio...

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