IMPAIRMENTS OF DISCOURSE ABILITIES AND EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS IN TRAUMATICALLY BRAIN-INJURED ADULTS

Preliminary findings from an ongoing investigation of the potential re lationship between narrative discourse performance and executive funct ions in adults with traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are reported. Narra tive stories were elicited from 32 adults with TBI. Stories were analy sed at three levels: sentence production, intersentential cohesive ade quacy, and story episode structure. These measures were then correlate d with scores from the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), the primary measure of executive function. A significant correlation was noted be tween a factor score from the WCST and the measure of story structure, but not sentence production or cohesive adequacy. These results sugge st that executive functions may be a promising avenue to pursue in the search for underlying causal factors of narrative discourse dysfuncti on and, therefore to better delineate the nature of communicative defi cits secondary to TBI.