Each year over 8 million people sustain head injuries. Of those who survive, approximately 80,000 have long-lasting cognitive, physical, emotional and behavioral disabilities which require long-term rehabilitation services; and a large portion of these survivors are not able to successfully reintegrate into their work and life situations. Survivors of brain injury have serious learning and memory deficits, as well as problems dealing with stress, modulating emotions, and interacting appropriately with others. The literature indicates that no ecologically valid training methods exists to deal with these problems Thus, there is a need for effective methods to help retrain brain-injured individuals in social discourse and communication skills; methods which allow these individuals to relearn practical, real life transactions at their own pace in a low-risk clinical setting. In Phase I, we will produce and evaluate a prototype multimedia simulation of a real life scenario which can be used by social rehabilitation therapists in social discourse retraining for brain-injured clients. Additional simulations will be produced in Phase II for a longitudinal study of outcome effectiveness. The ultimate goal is a therapeutically effective series of interactive videodisc simulations of distribute to hospitals rehabilitation center and therapists in private practice.
