Cooking breakfast after a brain injury

Abstract

Acquired brain injury (ABI) often compromises the ability to carry out instrumental activities of daily living such as cooking. ABI patients' difficulties with executive functions and memory result in less independent and efficient meal preparation. Accurately assessing safety and proficiency in cooking is essential for successful community reintegration following ABI, but in vivo assessment of cooking by clinicians is time-consuming, costly, and difficult to standardize. Accordingly, we examined the usefulness of a computerized meal preparation task (the Breakfast Task; Craik and Bialystok, 2006) as an indicator of real life meal preparation skills. Twenty-two ABI patients and 22 age-matched controls completed the Breakfast Task. Patients also completed the Rehabilitation Activities of Daily Living Survey (RADLS; Salmon, 2003) and prepared actual meals that were rated by members of the clinical team. As expected, the ABI patients had significant difficulty on all aspects of the Breakfast Task (failing to have all their foods ready at the same time, over- and under-cooking foods, setting fewer places at the table, and so on) relative to controls. Surprisingly, however, patients' Breakfast Task performance was not correlated with their in vivo meal preparation. These results indicate caution when endeavoring to replace traditional evaluation methods with computerized tasks for the sake of expediency.

Cognitive processes in the Breakfast Task: Planning and monitoring.

“…Her performance on other Breakfast Task measures was normal. A recent study by Tanguay, Davidson, Guerrero Nuñez, and Ferland (2014) tested 22 patients with acquired brain injury and 22 controls on the Breakfast Task, and found that the patients scored substantially lower on all measures. The authors also had patients cook a real meal, with the finding that patients' own assessment of their cooking ability correlated significantly with overall performance on the Breakfast Task, although clinicians' assessments of the patients' real-meal cooking skills did not correlate with the computer task.…”

Cognitive Deficits Underlying Error Behavior on a Naturalistic Task after Severe Traumatic Brain Injury

“…For instance, Renison et al ( 2012 ) reported a significant association between performance on the VLT and a real-life equivalent task. In contrast, Tanguay et al ( 2014 ) found that participants' performance on the Breakfast Task was not significantly related to their ability to prepare an actual meal. Such findings highlight potential limitations of computerized tasks in terms of the capacity to represent the complexities of the real-world, such as the multisensory experiences that accompany cooking (McGuire, 2014 ).…”

“…Test batteries such as the Behavioral Assessment of Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS; Wilson et al, 1996 ) and Test of Everyday Attention (Robertson et al, 1996 ) include subtests designed to simulate real life tasks while maintaining practical utility (e.g., feasible administration time and application in different settings). Other approaches use computerized simulation tasks and virtual reality platforms, such as the Breakfast Task (Tanguay et al, 2014 ) and Virtual Library Test (VLT: Renison et al, 2012 ), with programmes designed to resemble everyday contexts. However, evidence of the relationship between performance on such measures and corresponding real-world tasks is mixed.…”

The cooking task: making a meal of executive functions

“…The act of cooking a meal requires several executive functions, including capacity to multitask, plan, use prospective memory and maintain and complete, both sub and overall goals within a strict timeframe (Craik and Bialystok, 2006 ). Although there is limited research, previous findings suggest that cooking tasks (CT) may be more sensitive to patient deficits than traditional neuropsychological measures (Chevignard et al, 2000 , 2008 ; Fortin et al, 2003 ; Craik and Bialystok, 2006 ; Tanguay et al, 2014 ). Fortin et al ( 2003 ) found no difference between a head-injured group and controls on standardized assessment, although the patient group showed diminished ability to cook a meal.…”