Environmental accommodations for a child with traumatic brain injury

Primary objective: Children with severe TBI frequently demonstrate language and cognition challenges and require accommodations to succeed academically. However, minimal research exists about accommodation efficacy for this population. This study examined the effect of environmental accommodations (reduced visual and auditory distractions) on the redirections, task variability and accuracy of a child with severe TBI when performing cognitive-linguistic activities. Hypothesis: The researchers hypothesized no differences in variability between accommodation conditions; poorest task performance and most frequent task redirections given no environmental accommodations; comparable task performance and redirections with visual accommodation and auditory accommodation; and highest task performance and fewest redirections with combined visual and auditory accommodations. Research design: The researchers used an alternating treatment, single case design to compare task performance, variability and redirection averages across conditions. They used visual inspection, linear growth curve analyses and repeated measure analyses for data interpretation. Methods and procedures: Data collection occurred during label-object association, oral directions and divided attention tasks over 22 sessions varying in accommodation provision. Main outcomes and results: Findings showed visual plus auditory accommodations resulted in fewer redirections and superior average performance on all tasks although substantial variability persisted. Significant differences emerged across conditions only for the oral directions task.