The authors compare pretend play and executive function both in preschool children with an acquired brain injury and in neurotypical preschool children. They find the ability to produce logical, sequenced pretend play actions and object substitutions in play correlates strongly with executive function ability in both groups, and working memory…

Purpose: Narrative discourse (e.g., telling anecdotes or relating personal events) comprises a key part of social interaction and is commonly affected after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Research over the past decades has enabled improved characterization of discourse impairment after TBI, but a critical lack of research into discourse…

The aim of this study was to further explore Special Educational Need Co-ordinators' (SENCos) knowledge of childhood acquired brain injury (ABI) and if they have received training on how to effectively support children and young people (CYP) with an ABI in school. SENCos from Nottinghamshire were asked to complete a survey face-to-face or online.…

Appropriate management by schools of all students with a concussion, regardless of the cause, has not received the same attention as sports-related concussions. Focus groups conducted with Massachusetts School Nurses in 2015 found that some had applied protocols required in the state's sports concussion regulations to all students with concussion,…

Purpose: The public has long had misconceptions about traumatic brain injury (TBI) and its effects. Concussion education targeted toward athletes has been increasing with passage of return-to-play laws in all 50 states. The current study examined differences in public knowledge about TBI and concussion, and the extent to which students and parents…

Background: Cognitive impairment, particularly of executive functioning, has been implicated in deficits in spoken discourse production following acquired brain injury (ABI). However, due to variation in the methodologies and heterogeneity of findings across studies, the nature and extent of this association is not well understood. Aims: This…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to advance the use of structured, monologic discourse analysis by validating an automated scoring procedure for core lexicon (CoreLex) using transcripts. Method: Forty-nine transcripts from persons with aphasia and 48 transcripts from persons with no brain injury were retrieved from the AphasiaBank database. Five…

Background: Although long-term social challenges following traumatic brain injury (TBI) are well documented, the challenges of establishing new relationships following TBI are less understood. Aims: To examine how the type of non-verbal cues produced by an unfamiliar communication partner impacts feelings of relationship closeness by people with…

The high prevalence of brain injury incidents in adolescence and adulthood demands effective models for re-learning lost cognitive abilities. Impairment in brain injury survivors' higher-level cognitive functions is common and a negative predictor for long-term outcome. We conducted two small-scale interventions (N = 12; 33.33% female) with…

Linguistic alignment--the contingent reuse of our interlocutors' language at all levels of linguistic structure--pervades human dialogue. Here, we design unique measures to capture the degree of linguistic alignment between interlocutors' linguistic representations at three levels of structure: lexical, syntactic, and semantic. We track these…

Purpose: Politeness markers (PMs) are words that enhance cooperativity in dialogue and are an essential component of professional/work communication. Persons with moderate/severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) underuse PMs in connected speech and have employment stability issues. The voicemail elicitation task (VET) is a standardized computerized…

Background: Social communication problems are common in adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI), particularly problems in spoken discourse. Social communication problems are thought to reflect underlying cognitive impairments. Aims: To measure the contribution of two cognitive processes, executive functioning (EF) and theory of mind (ToM), to the…

Purpose: Return to competitive employment presents a major challenge to adults who survive traumatic brain injury (TBI). This study was undertaken to better understand factors that shape employment outcome by comparing the communication profiles and self-awareness of communication deficits of adults who return to and maintain employment with those…

Objective: Executive dysfunction in college students who have had an acute traumatic brain injury (TBI) was investigated. The cognitive, behavioral, and metacognitive effects on college students who endorsed experiencing a brain injury were specifically explored. Participants: Participants were 121 college students who endorsed a mild TBI, and 121…

Purpose: This article examines how the Republic of Ireland conceptualizes disability, specifically acquired brain injury (ABI); how it meets the needs of people with ABI; and its similarities and difference with the U.S. system of ABI professional care, policy, and services. The article provides ideas for improvements and innovations toward ABI…