Comprehension and expression of affective sentences in traumatic brain injury

Abstract

The comprehension and production of affective prosody and facial expression was investigated in subjects with traumatic brain injury and matched normal subjects. Performance on tasks designed to assess the ability to recognise affect in congruous, neutral, and ambiguous sentences and the ability to portray emotions in affectively neutral sentences revealed significant impairments for the subjects with traumatic brain injury. Analysis of correct responses to ambiguous sentences found increased reliance of brain-injured subjects on verbal compared to paralinguistic cues in interpreting the emotion of the sentence. The clinical implications of the findings relative to counselling, compensation strategies, and direct intervention for patients with traumatic brain injury are discussed.