A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Cognitive Functions Predicting Employment of Individuals with Acquired Brain Injury

Abstract

: Background: Only 20% of the hospitals in Japan currently provide work support services for patients with acquired brain injury (ABI). Since the new employment quota system in Japan requires private companies to hire individuals with psychiatric disabilities as of April 2018, the number of employees with ABI is expected to increase. This social background would encourage medical staff to rely more on neuropsychological assessment test scores to under-stand the cognitive abilities of those patients who need vocational support to transition from hospital to work. Purpose: The of the study was to clarify the subcategories of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale that would predict the work ability of individuals with ABI. Methodology: A systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted to identify specific cognitive functions related to work ability. Four original articles from MEDLINE, CINAHL, ERIC, CiNii, and the ICHUSHI database that met study inclusion criteria were analyzed. Results: Results showed that there were four tasks under the verbal test—“vocabulary,” “digit span,” “arithmetic,” and “similarities”—and two tasks under the performance test—“block design” and “coding”—that were predictive variables of work ability. Conclusion: Assessing cognitive functions of individuals with ABI, such as “working memory,” “continuous atten-tion,” “abstract thinking,” “vocabulary and expression,” and “time series processing,” could more effectively predict work ability.