174 National Academy of Neuropsychology

Hannon, R.,* Foster, M.,* Roberts, L.,* Day, C. L.,# Jordan, P.,* Murray, C.,* & Schmedel, W.* *University of the Pacific; #San Joaquin Delta College. Self-rating of memory and performance on clinical memory tests in brain-injured and normal college students.

The relationship between subjective perception of memory and clinical memory test performance in brain- injured individuals is unclear. Several studies suggest that many types of brain injury produce unawareness of the presence of memory impairment. Mateer, Sohlberg and Crinean (1987), however, found that brain-injured subjects' memory self-ratings were more impaired than controls' self-ratings on a Memory Questionnaire designed to assess four memory factors: Attention/Prospective, Retrograde, Anterograde, and Historic/Overlearned. No memory tests were given. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between self-ratings on the Memory Questionnaire factors and performance on clinical memory tests selected to relate to specific memory factors.

Subjects were 19 brain-injured and 33 control students at San Joaquin Delta College who rated their memory on the Memory Questionnaire and then took a battery of memory and attention tests. Brain-injured students rated their memories as significantly worse than controls only on the Anterograde memory factor, though their performance was significantly worse than controls on 8 of the 11 memory and attention tests administered. Pearson correlations between Memory Questionnaire self-ratings and scores on clinical memory tests were computed separately for brain-injured subjects and controls. Several significant correlations in the predicted direction occurred for control subjects (18 of 55 z's), while only one significant correlation occurred for brain-injured subjects.