We examined the long-term retention of a learned automatic cognitive
process in 17 severe TBI participants and 10 controls. Participants had
initially received extensive consistent-mapping (CM) training (i.e., 3600
trials) in a semantic category visual search task (Schmitter-Edgecombe
& Beglinger, 2001). Following CM training,
TBI and control groups demonstrated dramatic performance improvements and
the development of an automatic attention response (AAR), indicating
task-specific and stimulus-specific skill learning. After a 5- or 10-month
retention interval, participants in this study performed a New CM task and
the originally trained CM task to assess for retention of task-specific
and stimulus-specific visual search skills, respectively. No significant
group differences were found in the level of retention for either skill
type, indicating that individuals with severe TBI were able to retain the
learned skills over a long-term retention interval at a level comparable
to controls. Exploratory analyses revealed that TBI participants who
returned at the 5-month retention interval showed nearly complete skill
retention, and greater skill retention than TBI participants who returned
at the 10-month interval, suggesting that “booster” or
retraining sessions may be needed when a skill is not continuously in use.
(JINS, 2006, 12, 802–811.)