Presentation

Karen Arellano^1,2, David Soto¹, Maria del Mar Freijo³, Simona Mancini¹; ¹Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, ²Universidad del Pais Vasco. San Sebastian, Spain, ³Biocruces-Bizkaia Health Research Institute. Cruces University Hospital, Spain

Metacognition is the ability to reflect about one’s cognitive and behavioral processes (Nelson and Narens, 1994). It has been suggested that if a patient is aware of their own mistakes, they may be more likely to try to correct them (Robertson and Murre, 1999). Thus, metacognition may well play a crucial role in patients’ recovery. However, the assessment of this ability is usually not part of the set of functions evaluated after stroke. In this longitudinal study, we investigate the extent to which metacognition of language and domain-general abilities is impaired and its involvement on recovery. Methods. Participants: Thirteen (2 female, age: 52-84 years (M=67.77, sd=8.07) patients that had suffered from a first ischemic stroke either in the left or right hemisphere, no more than one week prior, accepted to participate in the first session and continue with the follow-up (LHS: n=4; RHS: n=9). Six participants for the non-brain damaged (NBD) group, matched in age, sex, education and linguistic profile with the clinical groups, were also recruited. Design and Material: We assess metacognition of domain-general and linguistic abilities after stroke at four time points(TP): within the first week after stroke (TP1), three to four weeks post-stroke (TP2), three months after stroke (TP3), and six months post-stroke (TP4). Subjects in the NBD group are tested in only one session. Participants are administered a set of linguistic (LNG) and domain-general tests (DG: Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices, Digit and Visual Spans) and asked to provide a confidence rating based on a visual scale at the end of each trial (1=”very sure”, 4=”unsure”). One point is given for each correct confidence judgment: when participants report high confidence in trials answered correctly and low confidence in those answered incorrectly. Results: Average of correct confidence judgments show that the NBD group performed better than patients in the linguistic (M=0.98, sd=0.11) and the DG battery (M=0.88, sd=0.32), respectively. Between the brain damaged participants the RH group (LNG TP1: M=0.97, sd=0.14, TP2: M=0.96, sd=0.19; DG TP1: M=0.78 , sd=0.41 , TP2: M=0.77, sd=0.41) performed better than the LH group (LNG TP1: M=0.92, sd=0.26, TP2: M=0.93, sd=0.24; DG TP1: M=0.74 , sd=0.43 , TP2: M=0.71, sd=0.45) at judging their responses in both batteries and TPs. Conclusion: Preliminary data from the small sample presented here show that metacognition is impaired following a first ischemic stroke and appear to indicate that this might be more prominent after LH stroke. Although, the three groups performed similarly in the metacognitive assessment of their responses in the linguistic tasks, a greater difference is seen in their judgments in the DG abilities, where LH and RH participants showed poorer self-awareness of their mistakes. Changes in their metacognitive ability from TP1 to TP2 are not observed. As data collection is ongoing, the analysis of a bigger sample including patients with more evident language deficits and follow-up assessments months after the stroke will allow us to determine whether changes in metacognition are related with performance in linguistic and non-linguistic functions over time during recovery from stroke.

Topic Areas: Disorders: Acquired, Control, Selection, and Executive Processes