The performance of traumatically brain injured adults on tone pattern recognition tasks

The purpose of this descriptive study was to determine if differences exist in the accuracy between normal subjects and traumatically brain injured subjects on tone pattern tasks. A second and related purpose was to determine if differences exist in accuracy and pattern of performance among cognitive levels 6 - 8 on the Ranchos Los Amigos Scale of Cognitive Levels and Expected Behaviors as described by Hagen and Malkmus (1979). Four traumatically brain injured subjects and four normal subjects listened to an audio tape presentation of two, three, and four tone sequences and marked their answers on a score sheet. The tone pattern recognition task consisted of six subtests each with ten practice items and fifty test items. The results of this study suggest:

1. Traumatically brain injured adults exhibit more difficulty on a tone pattern recognition task than normal adults; and

2. No apparent differences exist in accuracy and patterns of performance among the three cognitive levels used in this study.