Comprehension and expression of affective sentences in traumatic brain injury

The comprehension and production of affective prosody and facial expression was investigated in subjects with traumatic brain injury and matched norma l subjects. Performance on tasks designed to assess the ability to recognis e affect in congruous, neutral, and ambiguous sentences and the ability to portray emotions in affectively neutral sentences revealed significant impa irments for the subjects with traumatic brain injury. Analysis of correct r esponses to ambiguous sentences found increased reliance of brain-injured s ubjects on verbal compared to paralinguistic cues in interpreting the emoti on of the sentence. The clinical implications of the findings relative to c ounselling, compensation strategies, and direct intervention for patients w ith traumatic brain injury are discussed.