Objective: To investigate the long-term outcome in prospective memory (PM), seven years after childhood severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), in a prospective longitudinal cohort.
Participants: 76 young individuals (aged 7-22 years): 39 patients with a severe accidental TBI included prospectively seven years earlier, aged 0-15 years at injury, and 37 controls individually matched on age, gender and parental education.
Main outcome measures: Three novel short PM tasks varying in the delay, motivation and context (ecological versus paper and pencil task).
Results: Individuals with severe TBI showed significantly poorer PM than matched controls in the two low-motivation PM tasks: (1) the ecological long-delay task consisting of sending a letter on a rainy day (p=0.047, odds ratio = 2.6); (2) the non-ecological short-delay task consisting of taking off post-its while identifying facial emotions (p=0.004, r=0.34). Differences in PM on the high motivation were not significant. PM is impaired several years post severe TBI.
Keywords: Brain injury; children; cohort; prospective memory.