Comparison of Executive Functions of Working Memory, Cognitive Flexibility and Inhibition Skills in Patients with Traumatic Brain Injury and Healthy People

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to compare the executive functions of working memory, cognitive flexibility and inhibition skills in patients with traumatic brain injury and healthy people. In this causal-comparative study, 15 patients with traumatic brain injury with an age range of 20 to 60 years who were hospitalized in the past 3 months to a year as the experimental group and 15 healthy people from the normal community of Rasht city as companions Referees to specialized centers with an age range of 30 to 60 years were voluntarily selected as a control group by purposive sampling. The results showed that the patients performed weaker in two active memory tests, Wechsler's forward and backward digit span test in both visual and auditory sections, as well as the N-BACK test, and showed a significant difference in active memory performance compared to the healthy group. They gave. The difference between the two groups in the number of classes obtained, survival and response time in the cognitive flexibility test, Wisconsin test, is statistically significant, and this shows the significant superiority of the healthy group in cognitive flexibility compared to the sick group. Also, the findings of this research show that in the evaluation of inhibitory control with the go/no test, no significant difference was observed in the number of errors in this test between the two groups, but in the response time, the patient group showed a statistically significant difference compared to the control group.

Keywords: Traumatic brain injury, Working memory, Inhibitory control, Cognitive flexibility, Traumatic brain injury