Cognitive Rehabilitation:ACTION Training for Soldiers With Executive Dysfunction

Overview

Many Service members (SM) experience executive dysfunction associated with mild traumatic brain injury symptom complex (mTBI-sc), for which they receive cognitive rehabilitation. Cognitive rehabilitation (CR) for executive dysfunction often involves metacognitive strategy instruction (MSI) to help patients self-regulate their behavior though a goal management process - identifying a goal, anticipating performance problems, generating possible solutions, self-monitoring performance during the activity, recognizing maladaptive task strategies, stopping and then modifying real-time task behavior by choosing an alternate strategy. MSI alone often does not result in improved daily functioning because it requires conscious cognitive oversight to employ (which is difficult for people with executive dysfunction) and it presumes that simply establishing goals propels goal-directed action, when for many people, this is not so. Social psychologists report that people who set implementation intentions (if-then statements that link specific situational cues with specific goal actions) are more likely to perform goal actions than those who only set goal intentions. Implementation intentions are believed to be effective because they enable people to switch from conscious-effortful reflective action control to automatic, reflexive action control associated with selected situational cues. A team of researchers from the Courage Kenny Research Center (CKRC), Traumatic Brain Injury Center at Fort Campbell, KY (TBIC-FC), and Neurofunctional Research and Consulting has developed a brief CR intervention to teach SM with mTBI-sc to set implementation intentions called ACTION (AutomatiC iniTiation of IntentiONs) sequence training. The purpose of this pilot study to evaluate: 1) the practicality of instructional methods used to teach SM with mTBI-sc to perform the ACTION sequence and 2) the efficacy of ACTION sequence training in achieving personal goals and performance on a task that challenges executive function using a small randomized controlled trial. If the results are positive, a larger study would be conducted to determine the impact of ACTION sequence training on SM performance on military-relevant tasks and goals.

The primary aims of this feasibility study are as follows: Aim 1: Finalize ACTION training curriculum; develop manuals; field test . * Work with implementation intentions research expert and a military consultant to develop a training task gradation schema which informs the identification and modification of existing implementation intentions training tasks so that they have military face validity. * Finalize the adherence support methods and other training worksheets and materials. * Field test training tasks and adherence support methods on small cohort of civilians with mTBI-sc from CKRC to assure feasibility. * Finalize ACTION sequence training manuals; assure intra-rater and inter-rater reliability for scoring quality of implementation intentions statements. Aim 2: Evaluate ACTION sequence training instructional methods (the extent to which SM with mTBI-sc are able to learn to establish IF-THEN statements that have the potential to trigger automatic enactment of goal-actions and the extent to which SM with mTBI-sc report the training experience as satisfactory and beneficial). * Enroll up to 28 participants in the study (SM with mTBI-sc who are referred to MSI at TBIC-FC). * Evaluate whether or not participants can correctly craft implementation intentions by using a rubric to score implementation intentions developed by participants during clinic sessions and during home practice; administer participation satisfaction survey at posttest. Aim 3: Test the efficacy of ACTION sequence training by evaluating the extent to which training 1) improves SM's with mTBI-sc ability to perform a complex test of executive function (e.g. Hotel Test) and 2) advances progress towards self-identified goals in daily life (via Canadian Occupational Performance measure \[COPM\] and Goal Attainment Scaling \[GAS\]) as compared to a control condition. Additionally, determine level of adherence to completing daily homework practice ans assigned prospective memory tasks. * Collect pre-post data on the Hotel Test, COPM, GAS on all participants. * Collect data on completion of homework assignments * Collect data on completion of prospective memory tasks