Sentence planning following traumatic brain injury.
BACKGROUND
Current descriptions of the language problems following traumatic brain injury (TBI) generally emphasize evaluating discourse production and explaining the observed outcomes in terms of disruptions to executive processes. The notion of sentence production impairments at the sentence level has generally been ignored. To respond to this issue, we examined patterns of intrasentential pausing and sentence planning during sentences produced by normal and TBI speakers.


METHODS
Seven individuals with TBI functioning at Rancho Level V-VI and seven age-matched controls participated in this pilot experiment. Group performances were compared for pause time and verbal initiation time during the production of sentences varying in syntactic complexity under two conditions (reading and repetition).


RESULTS
Significant group differences were observed in pausing during both conditions. Pausing patterns of the participants with TBI were strongly correlated with the syntactic complexity of sentences. No significant group differences were observed on verbal initiation time of repeated sentences, although increased initiation times were present among the TBI participants.


CONCLUSIONS
These findings of this pilot project suggest that the deficits in language production following TBI may include specific impairments to sentence planning. This evidence suggests that the language profile of TBI may be one of both microlinguistic and macrolinguistic impairments.
Ellis
Charles
C
Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425, USA. ellisc@musc.edu
Peach
Richard K
RK
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000150:complications* / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013064:Speech Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*