Social communication following traumatic brain injury part I: State-of-the-art review of assessment tools

Abstract

Purpose: The primary aim of this paper was to identify and describe current social communication assessment tools for adults with traumatic brain injury.

Method: We conducted a state-of-the-art review to identify and categorise the range of social communication assessment tools found in the assessment and treatment literature that revealed 42 measures that were coded according to characteristics related to assessment types, psychometrics, and implementation.

Result: Of the 42 assessments, 64% evaluated social cognition and the remaining 36% evaluated communication. Coding of implementation categories revealed that only 18/42 (43%) measures were ecologically grounded and 23/42 (55%) were available to clinicians by purchase or in the public domain. Only three measures incorporated questions or an assessment of the examinee’s priorities or concerns.

Conclusion: A number of factors limit current social communication assessment. The lack of tools that objectively and reliably evaluate communication or social cognition in ecologically valid ways remains problematic. Of particular concern is the lack of prioritisation of the individual’s communication values and needs. Recommendations include a call to focus research on the development of more contextual, standardised assessments, consider availability and feasibility when tools are being developed, and evaluate assessment processes as well as discrete tools.

Keywords:

• social communication
• pragmatics
• traumatic brain injury
• assessment

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Petra Cornwell for her feedback regarding this project.

Declaration of interest

All authors are affiliated with the Academy of Neurologic Communication Disorders and Sciences (ANCDS) but do not receive any financial benefits to such an affiliation. The second author, Sheila MacDonald, is the author of the Functional Assessment of Verbal Reasoning and Executive Strategies and has financial interest in CCD Publishing, the publishing company. Two other authors conducted the coding of the FAVRES by consulting the literature.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2019.1583280