Background: Exploring the perceptions of individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) towards their brain injury recovery across the continuum of care may offer insights to support engagement with rehabilitation services. Illness narratives are a potentially valuable avenue for examining perceptions of recovery that may influence engagement.…

Background: There is a lack of evidence relating to cognitive-communication difficulties following traumatic brain injury (TBI) sustained in older adulthood. A prominent area in which post-TBI cognitive-communication difficulties manifest is at the level of social communication. An investigation of social communication focusing on comparison of…

Background: Unaided communication behaviours may provide communication support for persons with severe cerebrovascular accidents (CVA), as these individuals often experience severe communication difficulties, regardless of the aetiology. Though often subtle, these behaviours are present during all stages of recovery, and therefore communication…

Background: Although previous research studies have defined several prognostic factors that affect cognitive-communication performance in patients with all traumatic brain injury (TBI) severity, little is known about what variables are associated with cognitive-communication impairment in complicated mild TBI (mTBI) specifically. Aims: To…

Background: Cognitive-communication disorders are common following an acquired brain injury (ABI). Remediation should involve individualized goal-setting, yet few reports describe the effectiveness of setting communication goals in a group setting. Aims: To describe a process for setting and achieving goals for people with ABI. Methods &…

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…

Background: Previous research has shown that speakers with aphasia rely on enactment more often than non-brain-damaged language users. Several studies have been conducted to explain this observed increase, demonstrating that spoken language containing enactment is easier to produce and is more engaging to the conversation partner. This paper…

Background: The purpose of this study is to investigate the pragmatic abilities of individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Several studies in the literature have previously reported communicative deficits in individuals with TBI, however such research has focused principally on communicative deficits in general, without providing an…

Background: A requisite skill for successful conversation is the ability to adjust one's language according to contextual factors. Aims: This study examined one aspect of language use in context--the use of mental-state terms, i.e. words that communicate thoughts, beliefs or feelings--in conversations between adult males with and without traumatic…

Background: Listening to how people talk about the consequences of acquired aphasia helps one gain insight into how people construe disability and communication disability in particular. It has been found that some of these construals can be more of a disabling barrier in re-engaging with life than the communication impairment itself. Aims: To…