The ability to learn the way around new places is an important skill, which many of us take for granted. It is also a skill that is often lost after brain injury and this can have a profound effect on people's lives. Previous research has shown that impaired route learning affects between 30% and 80% of people with acquired brain injury. However, only one study has previously looked at rehabilitation of route learning and that study focused on laboratory tasks.
A new study by researchers at the University of Birmingham has looked at the effectiveness of a commonly used rehabilitation technique called errorless learning for teaching route finding. The study, published in the latest issue of the journal Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, attempted to recreate a real-life situation by examining route finding in a virtual reality town.
Errorless learning works by presenting information in such a way that the learner is prevented from making errors, learning exclusively through repeated exposure to correct information. This is in contrast to traditional trial-and-error learning and has been found to be particularly effective for treating people with brain injury.
In the study twenty people with acquired brain injury learned two equally difficult routes around a virtual town based on the city of Nice, which were presented on a Sony Playstation 2. For one route full guidance was provided and the information was presented gradually in order to prevent errors. For the other route participants were allowed to make mistakes and learn by trial-and-error. The results showed that route recall following errorless learning was much more accurate than after trial-and-error learning.
This research provides encouraging evidence that such a crucial everyday skill as finding the way around a new town can be effectively rehabilitated after brain injury.
Reference:
Lloyd, J., Riley, G., Powell, T. (2009) Errorless learning of novel routes through a virtual town in people with acquired brain injury, Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 19 (1), 98 - 109.
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