Learning in post-traumatic amnesia following extremely severe closed head injury

Verbal and spatial tests of learning were administered in five repeated sessions to nine subjects who were in post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) following extremely severe closed head injuries. PTA was operationally defined as having a score of 75 or less on the Galveston Orientation and Amnesia Test. Subjects showed no ability to learn verbal information (free recall and recognition of a word list) but showed some savings of spatial location information over the first three sessions. Results were interpreted as suggestive of a primarily passive mode of learning during PTA, regardless of the nature of the material to be learned.