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Memory problems are a frequent concern of people with epilepsy and their families. However, the role of memory rehabilitation in epilepsy has received limited attention. This chapter begins with a synopsis of memory-rehabilitation approaches applied to brain injury. It reviews evidence relating to the efficacy of these strategies in epilepsy. Relatively few systematic studies have been undertaken. Findings to date indicate some promise but data regarding generalization and permanence of effects are lacking. An on-going investigation involving a cohort of temporal lobe surgical candidates highlights the variability in response to cognitive rehabilitation and potential reasons for this. Future studies are advocated, as people with epilepsy represent a young neurological group; if memory functioning can be improved, this will often have far-reaching benefits over many decades.

This chapter focuses on people who have memory problems resulting from a neurological condition such as traumatic head injury, stroke, encephalitis, and hypoxic brain damage. Topics discussed include the meaning of recovery, factors affecting recovery, mechanisms of recovery, how much recovery takes place, improving natural recovery, and whether treatment is effective in helping people with memory and learning difficulties.

Kant’s transcendental revolution temporarily cut through debates between Humian skeptics and rationalists of a Leibniz-Wolffian stripe. It established reason as an immanent tribunal, judging its possibilities and errors. Through an analysis of the structure of intuition and the deduction of the categories intrinsic to judgement, largely scientific, the edifice of the first Critique raised epistemology out of metaphysics and psychologism. Together, the Antimonies and Paralogisms of pure reason indicated the contradictions and misuse of concepts into which rational speculation had hitherto fallen. The paralogisms of the erstwhile rational psychology had argued in favor of the simplicity, substantiality, and the personality of the soul, thereby following a logic of substance and accidents where passions and affects were the latter, attaching to that soul. By showing the errors of the paralogisms, Kant effectively “dispatched” virtually all affects to his “science of man and the world,” the anthropology of human practice. However, the solution to Kant’s Paralogisms of the soul opened a new circle, such that our inner sense and its logical condition, transcendental apperception preceded, but could only be thought thanks to, the categories of understanding. At stake was the intrinsic unity of consciousness within the transcendental project. Although the Critique of Practical Reason retained a crucial intellectual affect, Achtung (attention and respect), Kant’s epistemology required clear distinctions between understanding, reason, and affects. In a sense, ontology and epistemology bifurcate into the domains of a transcendental approach to experience as representation and what lays outside it (including pre-reflective sensibility and affects).

There are three kinds of difficulty that may cause a child’s written work to be incomprehensible. First, specific spelling difficulty, where some words may be so badly spelt that they are difficult to recognize. Secondly, specific writing difficulty, where the handwriting may be so untidy that it is illegible see Figure 7.3, p. 65). And, thirdly, language disorder, where the language used by the child may be so full of errors that it does not make sense. Specific spelling difficulty will be described in this chapter, specific writing difficulty in the next chapter, and language disorders will be described in Chapter 9. . . . What is specific spelling difficulty? . . . specific spelling difficulty can be defined as an unexplained, significant spelling difficulty. A significant difficulty is usually defined as a spelling age more than two standard deviations below the mean for the child’s age (see Chapter 1, p. 5 for the explanation of this term). Specific spelling difficulty is often associated with specific reading difficulty. In some children, specific spelling difficulty is an isolated problem. Although such children will have average reading ability, research studies suggest that subtle reading problems can be detected in such children on special testing. . . . How spelling is assessed . . . There are several standardized spelling tests in general use. These differ in the ways in which they test spelling. Some present the child with words that are part of his sight vocabulary, others present a wider range of words. Tests usually involve spelling from dictation. Some may also involve recognizing whether a printed word is correctly spelt or not. The psychologist will choose the test, or tests, that will provide information about the child’s spelling level, as well as about the nature of his difficulties. For example, a test that shows that a child has difficulties with spelling from dictation, but not with identifying words that are incorrectly spelt, may demonstrate particular problems with word memory. The psychologist will also try to differentiate between the different kinds of spelling errors, such as phonetic, visual, and sequential errors, which are described later in this chapter.