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Implicit causality bias in adults with traumatic brain injury
Haley C Dresang1, Lyn S Turkstra2
1Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Goodnight Hall 1975 Willow Drive, Madison, WI, 53706, USA.
Journal of Communication Disorders
|December 11, 2017
Summary
Adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI) demonstrate reduced implicit causality bias, impacting their ability to interpret social cues in sentences. This suggests subtle communication challenges following TBI.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Neuroscience
- Psychology
Background:
- Individuals with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) often exhibit pragmatic language impairments.
- Previous research focused on narrative discourse, overlooking sentence-level pragmatic cues.
- Implicit causality bias, the attribution of actions based on sentence structure, is a key social cue.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate implicit causality bias in adults with TBI.
- To determine if TBI affects the interpretation of sentence-level pragmatic cues.
Main Methods:
- 19 adults with TBI and 18 typical adults completed sentence fragments.
- Fragments contained interpersonal transitive verbs and two noun phrases.
Main Results:
- Adults with TBI displayed significantly less implicit causality bias compared to controls.
- TBI group made more errors in assigning clause causality.
Conclusions:
- Findings challenge the assumption of intact implicit processing in TBI.
- These deficits may explain everyday social communication failures in TBI survivors.
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