Measuring subjective organization in monozygotic twins discordant for traumatic brain injury: A case report

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Subjective organization (SO) facilitates storage and retrieval of information but is often impaired following traumatic brain injury. No study has compared measures of SO using association rule analyses to clustering analyses. Moreover, there have been no studies investigating whether patients post-brain injury subjectively organize non-verbal information.

OBJECTIVE:

This study investigates the relationship between SO and recall of words and symbols with participants discordant for traumatic brain injury. Additionally, the authors explored the conditions under which clustering or association rule measures of SO were best used.

METHOD:

Two female monozygotic twins discordant for traumatic brain injury completed a multi-trial free recall test of words and symbols. The authors examined whether measures of SO derived from clustering analysis or association rule modeling could differentiate organizational abilities between participants’ data.

RESULTS:

The twin following sequential traumatic brain injuries demonstrated significantly less SO and recall relative to the twin without a traumatic brain injury. Both twins subjectively organized verbal and non-verbal information and each measure could differentiate the twins’ performance.

CONCLUSION:

The quantitative analysis of SO can provide clinicians with valuable information concerning a patient’s recall performance. This study illustrates practical issues that may influence a clinician’s choice of these techniques.