Casual conversations between individuals with traumatic brain injury and their friends

Abstract

Primary objective: To investigate casual conversations with friends following severe traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Methods: Nine participants with severe TBI were matched by age, gender and education to nine control participants. Each participant also invited a friend to partake in the study. Participants were recorded engaging in a brief casual conversation with a friend. The resulting discourse was analysed using Exchange Structure Analysis (ESA). Rates of information giving, information requesting and communication repair and negotiation were collated. Non‐parametric statistical analyses were performed.

Results: Participants with and without TBI obtained similar rates of information giving and information requesting. The friends of the participants with TBI produced significantly lower rates of information giving measures when compared to the controls, but achieved comparable rates of information requesting and communication repair and negotiation measures. Participants with TBI were observed to produce tangential language and to have difficulties identifying communication breakdown, asking questions and engaging in conversational joking.

Conclusions: People with TBI are able to engage in casual conversations with friends in a similar way to matched controls. Friends of people with TBI are often restricted in contributing information in conversations. Further research is needed to specify the facilitative and restrictive communication behaviours so that they may be translated to clinical practise.

• Traumatic brain injury, communication, discourse, conversation, friendship, exchange structure analysis

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all of the participants for their contributions. Additionally we thank the staff at Liverpool Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit for assistance with the study, Susan Grant for participant assessment and video transcription and Rob Heard for statistical advice.

Declaration of Interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.