Mommy, I Got A Boo- Boo

By Kevin Ivan Chan

In a nutshell, the researchers assess 18 children with mild traumatic brain injury versus 18 healthy control children (

ages 8-16). Classical psychophysics thresholds for visuo-perceptual thresholds for first order task (linear properties such as color) and second order task (perceived by their contrast such as texture or depth) were measured. More specifically thresholds for orientation an

d direction identification were obtained.

After reading the study, it is without a shadow of a doubt, not for meant for the general public. There are just too much highfaluting words and concepts in the journal that even I, a senior undergraduate student majoring in psychology, cannot understand. The title fools me by seeming to be a study that is quite simple yet caters more for neurologist or neurosurgeons atlas. Nevertheless, I finished reading the study as the topic seems interesting by itself.

For example, they state they used optic flow as of their methodology, a little more introduction about it could have been appropriate. I literally had to search for the methodologies online to understand it. Pictures wouldn't have been bad as well. Getting back to the optic flow, I immediately got it when i saw pictures of the sample methodologies. (picture on the right is an optic flow picture experiment)

As for the methods, I fell that the researchers saturated each participant: there were just too many test that each participant was supposed to do. For example, there was the 1) psychophysical threshold test which involved 2 conditions (static and dynamic) and hence had two types of stimulus (first and second order) 2) the optic flow, which i have mentioned is quite difficult to understand 3) Frequency Doubling Technology that participants had to go through with for visual and a Rivermead Post-concussion Symptons questionnaire. The methodology just seems too much for 8 year old children.

An event during the experimentation did actually catch my mind. The researchers acknowledge that a total of 3 children with mild traumatic brain injury did not complete the study. The first child dropped out because of the severity of his headaches while the other two children dropped out because of personal reasons. I applaud the researches for they did not coerce their participants to finish the study. They had to look for participants in two hospitals and it isn't easy to find such patients that satisfied their conditions (Glasgow Coma Scale of 13-15, confusion or disorientation for 30 or less only during the trauma, memory loss less than 24 hours only and other very filtering requirements). Yet, they very much allow 3 participants back out of the experiment. Furthermore, they really published the backing out of these three people.

Also, I got quite confused. In the discussion part, the researchers mention that "their findings demonstrated no recovery of visual processing abilities over the assessment period which encompasses the first 3 months" yet in the conclusion they mention "perceptual deficits persisted up to 3 months after the trauma". Either an honest mistake or a really loophole in their study.

I applaud the researchers for being the first to do such a kind of experiment. According to them

, and I quote, "no study has investigated the perception of complex visual stimuli in children who suffered minimal traumatic brain injury. After all, this is very important topic of study. Custom belief along with scientific research tells us that it is developmentally important for basically not to receive a trauma especially to the head for their cephalic region is not as durable as the adult male.

Although so, we don't know how applicable this is for children to young teenagers. And now we do indeed now that it mild trauma does indeed cause visual impairment.

I do indeed feel bad for children who would have undergone mild trauma. After all, they are only children. The study reports that most of the trauma are actually from very trivial everyday activities such as bicycling, playing hockey, basketball, soccer and the likes.

Now it begs the questions, need we need to shield children from such activities? I mean these are such trivial things yet it can damage the quality of life for children. Do parents have to be overprotective of their children until they are teenagers? I honestly want to say yes but I myself would not want such an overprotecting mom or dad.

Parents who read this, if parents there are such parents who read the journal: Brain Injury, will indeed get more paranoid. This journal tells us what we already know, we should take care of our children but we should not restrain them.

To quote one of the most famous humanistic psychologist, if not he most, Abraham Maslow who said that the social reinforcement children receive should be neither excessively contingent nor excessively noncontingent. A course in behaviorism will tell you that this is simply a fancy way of saying: don't be too restrictive nor too lenient with your children as well.

Parents cannot forbid them from activities mentioned above, yes brain trauma is something we WISH AND PRAY does not happened but sometimes they just do (knock on wood). One should take care but to be honest and not mean, if it happens it happens. One shouldn't have to not ride an airplane just cause it is deemed unsafe and hijack-able (although it is actually safer than cars).

Brosseau-Lachaine, O., Gagnon, I., & Forget, R. (2008). Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Induces Prolonged Visual Processing Deficits in Children. Brain Injury, 22(9): 657-668