Measuring pragmatic competence of discourse output among Chinese-speaking individuals with traumatic brain injury

Abstract Objective: Discourse analysis is one of the clinical methods commonly used to assess language ability individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). However, majority published analytic frameworks are not geared for highlighting pragmatic aspect discourse deficits in acquired disorders, except those designed quantifying conversational samples. This study aimed examine how competence impaired and reflected spoken monologues Chinese speakers TBI. Methods: samples five tasks (personal narrative, storytelling, procedural, single- sequential picture description) were elicited from ten TBI survivors their controls. Each sample was measured using 16 indices (e.g., number informative words, percentage local/global coherence errors, repeated words or phrases) that corresponded four Gricean maxims. Twenty-five naïve also recruited perform perceptual rating quality all 50 audio files (five per participant), terms erroneous/inaccurate information, adequacy amount information given, as well degree organization clarity. Results: The maxim quantity best predicted TBI’s impairments. Naïve listeners’ perception pragmatics correlated measures on total length terminable units. Clinically, personal narrative storytelling could better elicit violations pragmatics. Conclusion: Applying maxims monologic oral narratives capture hallmark underlying problems may help provide an additional approach clinically assessing social communications subsequent management