Instructional Techniques in Cognitive Rehabilitation: A Preliminary Report

ABSTRACT

Instruction is an essential component of effective cognitive rehabilitation, which requires teaching or reteaching a variety of skills and concepts to people with compromised learning. Currently, the field lacks a cohesive set of principles to guide clinicians’ instructional behaviors. A review of the literature in related fields, in conjunction with findings in neuropsychology, reveals evidence-based principles that lead to effective instructional design and implementation. This article summarizes this work and attempts to provide clinicians with principles to guide their treatment planning when training or teaching clients with cognitive-communication disorders.

KEYWORDS

Acquired brain injury - memory rehabilitation - direct instruction - strategy training - errorless learning - distributed practice - spaced retrieval

REFERENCES

1 Meta-analysis is a process by which quantitative research findings on a prescribed topic are aggregated and statistically analyzed to determine the magnitude of difference or “effect size” between experimental and control groups (Gall, Borg, and Gall, 1996 [26b]).

2 The memory systems (e.g., nondeclarative versus declarative) associated with improvements under errorless learning conditions are a subject of some debate. Experimental evidence and reviews centered on this topic may be found in several sources (e.g., Evans et al, 2000 [37a]; Hunkin, Squires, Parkin, and Tidy, 1998 [37b] Riley et al, 2004 [40]; Tailby and Halsam, 2003 [44]; Wilson et al, 1994 [11]) but are not specifically addressed in this review.

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