The rationale for devising a post traumatic amnesia scale that adequately measures the ability to reliably lay down new memories is based on the islands of memory phenomenon, not uncommonly seen in the acute stages of severe traumatic brain injury, and recognised as early as 1932 by W . R . Russell.
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While other tests of post-traumatic amnesia, such as the Galveston Orientation and Amnesia Test, tend to focus on the patient s memories of the injury, which rely on potentially biased recall and unverifiable information, the WPTAS is composed of objective items that examine orientation and the ability to consistently retain simple information from one day to another.
