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Neuropragmatics: extralinguistic communication after closed head injury
B G Bara1, I Cutica, M Tirassa
1Centro di Scienza Cognitiva, Università di Torino, via Lagrange, Turin, 3-10123, Italy. bara@psych.unito.it
Brain and Language
|March 15, 2001
Summary
Head trauma impairs non-verbal communication skills. Closed-head-injured individuals struggled with complex communicative actions and failed communication attempts, impacting their social cognition.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Linguistics
Background:
- Communicative abilities can be affected by head trauma.
- Extralinguistic communication (e.g., gestures) is crucial for social interaction.
- Understanding communication deficits after brain injury is vital for rehabilitation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the comprehension of extralinguistic communicative actions in individuals with closed-head injury.
- To assess how different types of non-verbal communication (standard, deceit, irony) are processed.
- To compare extralinguistic comprehension deficits with previously studied linguistic deficits.
Main Methods:
- A protocol of 16 videotaped scenes depicting extralinguistic communicative actions was developed.
- The protocol was administered to 30 individuals with closed-head injury.
- Performance was analyzed based on the complexity and success/failure of the depicted actions.
Main Results:
- Comprehension performance declined with increasing complexity of communicative acts, from simple to complex standard acts, deceits, and ironies.
- Individuals performed significantly worse when interpreting failed communicative actions compared to successful ones.
- Results indicated specific deficits in understanding nuanced non-verbal social cues post-trauma.
Conclusions:
- Closed-head injury significantly impacts the ability to comprehend extralinguistic communicative signals.
- Deficits are more pronounced for complex and failed communication attempts, suggesting difficulties in inferring intentions.
- Findings support a theory of cognitive processes in intentional communication and highlight the need for targeted interventions for non-verbal communication deficits.