Ecological assessment of the dysexecutive syndrome using execution of a cooking task

Abstract

Patients with a dysexecutive syndrome often have severe disabilities in daily life activities. The aims of this study were to use a naturalistic experimental task to assess patients' disabilities, and to study the nature of the cognitive disorders underlying them. Execution of a cooking task involving multi-tasking (Chevignard et al., 2000) was studied in 45 patients with a dysexecutive syndrome following acquired brain injury. Patients made significantly more errors and were slower than controls; more than half of the patients did not achieve the goal and demonstrated dangerous behaviours. Those results were significantly correlated to the results of the Six Elements Task and to a behavioural questionnaire. They were also correlated to brain injury severity and to patients' cooking habits. This naturalistic assessment is clinically relevant to better assess patients' dysexecutive impairments in complex activities of daily living. Correlations of the results in the cooking task with the neuropsychological assessment highlighted the role of the dysexecutive syndrome in patients' disabilities, indicating control alterations rather than planning disorders, difficulty in dealing with the environment, and inhibiting inappropriate actions. The role of attention and prospective memory was also underlined, whereas other cognitive functions did not influence task performance.

Profinteg: A Tool for Real-Life Assessment of Activities of Daily Living in Patients with Cognitive Impairment

“…The empirical assessment method described in that study led to significant rehabilitation results for a given activity, and was limited to the activity that was targeted. Another assessment method has been developed by Chevignard, Taillefer, Picq, Poncet, Noulhiane, and Pradat-Diehl (2008) who assessed disability of brain-injured patients with a dysexecutive syndrome during a cooking task. The authors took into account different error types and attempted to associate them with the patient's neuropsychological deficits.…”

Les troubles cognitifs des traumatismes crâniens sévères

“…Ce type de tests peut mettre en évidence, dans des situations ouvertes et non structurées, des déficits qui n'apparaissent pas dans les tests fermés et structurés de la neuropsychologie plus traditionnelle [11][12][13].…”

Evaluación del desempeño ocupacional en la vida cotidiana en adictos. Creación de un instrumento de medida: el ADO

“…Existen muchos estudios que han aportado evidencia de tal alteración y disponemos de modelos teóricos que pueden explicar, desde perspectivas cada vez más amplias, los sustratos neurológi-cos implicados en estas alteraciones (Redish, Jensen y Jonson, 2008). La existencia de déficits en el funcionamiento frontal se acompaña de importante deterioro en el funcionamiento cotidiano (Chevignard, Taillefer, Picq, Poncet, Noulhiane y Pradat-Diehl, 2008) y, aunque en los adictos éstos no son tan severos como los que pueden observarse en otras patologías neuropsiquiátricas, llegan a traducirse en dificultades muy considerables en la vida diaria (Goldstein, Leskovjan, Hoff, Hitzemann, Bashan, Khalsa et al, 2004).…”