Acquired Brain Injury Awareness
Advice and Strategies for Teaching Students with a Disability
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Acquired Brain Injury Awareness Brochure PDF [149kb]
What is an Acquired Brain Injury (ABI)?
This term refers to damage to the brain that has occurred as a result of disease or injury. This term is often used when damage has occurred following a period of otherwise normal development. Like any other living tissue, brain tissue dies when something interferes with the delicate balance of temperature, pressure and chemicals necessary to keep it healthy. There are a number of ways this can happen, the most common being:
- trauma resulting from motor vehicle accidents, assault, serious sporting accidents etc.
- cerebrovascular accident (CVA) or stroke resulting from a blockage of blood vessels or from a brain haemorrhage
- brain tumours
- degenerative disease such as Alzheimer's
- infection; e.g. meningitis, encephalitis
- lack of oxygen e.g. near drowning accident, severe asthma attack
- poisoning e.g. substance abuse, petrol sniffing
The Effects of an Acquired Brain Injury
The effects of brain injury can vary from minor temporary problems to severe, long-term changes in some bodily or mental functions. These can be categorised in four groups of possible impairments:
Physical and sensory
- loss of function and coordination, changes to posture and balance
- difficulties with vision: blurred vision, visual field loss
- changes with hearing: tinnitus or 'ringing' in the ears
- heightened or reduced sensation and sensory awareness
- headaches
- epilepsy
Cognitive
The most frequent changes seen following a brain injury, can affect:
- memory
- attention and concentration
- planning and organising
- reason and abstract thinking
- problem solving
- information processing
- language
- perception
- insight
Psychosocial
This relates to the interaction between a person's mental/emotional state and socially expected behaviour. This balance may be affected by:
- emotional changes: increased anxiety, depression, anger, irritability, silliness
- social perception: lack of insight, selfcentredness, decreased inhibition or tact, over-familiarity, inappropriate behaviour
- lack of self control: impulsivity, impatience
- dependency: lack of initiative or motivation, indecisiveness, impaired judgement and planning skills
- rigidity: inflexibility in thoughts and actions, inability to learn from mistakes or cope with change, repetition of words, actions, ideas
Communication
- dysphasia - difficulty staying on the topic, reduced volume of speech, slow response time
- pragmatics - poor eye contact, inability to take turns in a conversation, inability to initiate topics; interrupting, talking too much, lack of expression, standing too close, using too much gesture
Positive interactions in the learning environment
The student may benefit from:
- memory aid strategies e.g. notebook, calendar and tape recorder
- Assessment requirements in writing as well as verbally
- learning techniques such as mind mapping, colour highlighting, regular review, step by step notes, a work diary with specific information to refer back to
- clear timelines for the completion of work
- clear steps or small work goals rather than one big project or goal
- assistance in sequencing activities
- explicit expectations and outcomes at the beginning of a task
- reduced visual and noise distractions
- being comfortable with existing tasks before being introduced to new ones
- abstract thoughts presented in a more concrete manner, such as physically demonstrating concepts rather than verbalising them
Other sources of support
