An exploration of higher-level language comprehension deficits and factors influencing them following blast TBI in US veterans

ABSTRACT

Primary Objective. The objective of this study was to investigate the factors that might have a negative influence on auditory processing and higher-level language processing in the US veterans of the recent foreign wars (Iraq and Afghanistan).

Research Design. Exploratory, cross-sectional, correlational, prospective, cohort-design.

Methods and Procedures. The experimental group consisted of 12 US veterans of war (10 males and 2 females) with blast exposure. The control group consisted of six US veterans (5 males and 1 female) without the history of blast exposure. Both groups were matched in mean age. Both groups were tested on Boston Assessment of Traumatic Brain Injury, Consonant Trigrams Test, Symbol Digit Modality Test, Trail Making Test, SCAN-3, CELF-5-Metalinguistics, CASL, and an unpublished test on the processing of sentence prosody.

Main Outcomes and Results. Significant group differences in attention, and time-compressed sentence processing were found. For those veterans (in the experimental group) who were not wearing their helmets at the time of blast, additional significant differences were noted with inferencing and auditory figure-ground tasks.

Conclusions: Findings support the importance of including speech/language pathologists in all stages of recovery for veterans post-blast exposure.

KEYWORDS:

• Blast traumatic brain injury
• blast exposure
• inferencing
• auditory processing disorder
• ambiguity

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr. Lawrence Weinberger, Dr. Deborah R. Welling, and Audrey Cheng for their wisdom, guidance, and suggestions. This venture would not have been successful if not for each and every one of them. I would also like to thanks all our service women and men who have bravely dedicated their lives for our country.

Declaration of Interest

The authors report no conflict of interest.