Conversational synchrony in the communicative interactions of individuals with traumatic brain injury

Abstract

Primary objective: To assess conversational synchrony in moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). Conversational synchrony, assessed by the similarity and co-ordination of words and words per turn, allows for effective and efficient communication and enhances the development of rapport.

Research design: Eighteen participants with TBI (seven females) and 19 healthy comparison participants (CP; eight females) engaged in a 10-minute conversation with an unfamiliar partner.

Methods and procedures: Conversational synchrony was assessed in these conversations by measuring the degree to which the participants’ productions of words and words per turn became more similar to one another over the course of the session.

Main outcomes and results: Significantly more sessions with participants with TBI (11/18 for words, 9/18 for words per turn) compared to CP sessions (5/19 for words, 4/19 for words per turns) did not display conversational synchrony. Likewise, synchrony was significantly correlated with subjective ratings of the interaction from raters who were blind to participant status and the study hypotheses.

Conclusions: These results suggest that TBI can disrupt conversational synchrony and can, in turn, negatively impact social perceptions. The relationship between impaired conversational synchrony and other social communicative deficits in TBI warrants further study.

• Communication accommodation
• discourse
• interpersonal co-ordination
• speech convergence
• traumatic brain injury

Acknowledgements

We thank the Duff Communication and Memory Laboratory for assistance with transcribing and coding the sessions.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper. This study was supported by NIDCD RO1 DC011755 to Melissa C. Duff.