PROCEDURAL DISCOURSE FOLLOWING TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY

Procedural discourse is a monologue discourse task concerned with expl aining to a listener how a particular activity is carried out. The stu dy reported here is part of a series of investigations into discourse abilities following severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). The aim of th is study was to compare the procedural discourse skills of a group of 26 TBI speakers, with those of two demographically distinct control gr oups. The first control group comprised 26 non-TBI orthopaedic patient s, and the second control group comprised 26 university students. Thes e control groups were selected because of the hypothesis that premorbi d demographic factors could influence sociolinguistic skills, and henc e performance on a procedural discourse task. The TBI group was system atically compared with the control groups on content, productivity, an d pragmatic measures. They were not significantly different from ortho paedic patients on measures relating to content and productivity; howe ver, they did differ significantly from the university students on the se measures. The TBI group differed significantly from both control gr oups with respect to the production of pragmatic errors, and these wer e predominantly concerned with information transfer. The results are d iscussed in relation to issues in selecting control groups for discour se research following TBI, together with the clinical implications of the findings.