Friendship Quality, Friendship Quantity, and Social Participation in Adults with Traumatic Brain Injury

Factors related to social inferencing performance in moderate-severe, chronic TBI

OBJECTIVE

Following traumatic brain injury (TBI), deficits in social cognition are common. Social inferencing is a crucial component of social cognition that enables an individual to understand the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of a communication partner when this information is not explicitly stated. Existing literature suggests a variety of factors contribute to social inferencing success (e.g. biological sex, executive functioning), yet findings are not conclusive, largely because these factors have been examined in isolation.

METHOD

In this cross-sectional study, stepwise regression with cross validation was used to examine the extent that several theoretically motivated factors were associated with social inferencing (measured by performance on The Awareness of Social Inference Test [TASIT]) in adult participants with TBI (n = 105). Demographic information, executive functioning, aggression, emotional functioning measures, and participation in society were all examined in relation to social inferencing performance.

RESULTS

The findings confirm the importance of higher-level cognitive skills (i.e. executive functioning) in social inferencing, and advance the literature by underlining the potential importance of productive participation in social inferencing performance.

CONCLUSION

This study innovatively highlights factors linked with social inferencing skills and, in doing so, how deficits in social inferencing might manifest in the lives of individuals with TBI.

Intact speech-gesture integration in narrative recall by adults with moderate-severe traumatic brain injury

PURPOSE

Real-world communication is situated in rich multimodal contexts, containing speech and gesture. Speakers often convey unique information in gesture that is not present in the speech signal (e.g., saying "He searched for a new recipe" while making a typing gesture). We examine the narrative retellings of participants with and without moderate-severe traumatic brain injury across three timepoints over two online Zoom sessions to investigate whether people with TBI can integrate information from co-occurring speech and gesture and if information from gesture persists across delays.

METHODS

60 participants with TBI and 60 non-injured peers watched videos of a narrator telling four short stories. On key details, the narrator produced complementary gestures that conveyed unique information. Participants retold the stories at three timepoints: immediately after, 20-min later, and one-week later. We examined the words participants used when retelling these key details, coding them as a Speech Match (e.g., "He searched for a new recipe"), a Gesture Match (e.g., "He searched for a new recipe online), or Other ("He looked for a new recipe"). We also examined whether participants produced representative gestures themselves when retelling these details.

RESULTS

Despite recalling fewer story details, participants with TBI were as likely as non-injured peers to report information from gesture in their narrative retellings. All participants were more likely to report information from gesture and produce representative gestures themselves one-week later compared to immediately after hearing the story.

CONCLUSION

We demonstrated that speech-gesture integration is intact after TBI in narrative retellings. This finding has exciting implications for the utility of gesture to support comprehension and memory after TBI and expands our understanding of naturalistic multimodal language processing in this population.

Designing evidence-based support aids for social media access for individuals with moderate-severe traumatic brain injury: A preliminary acceptability study

Background

Adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI) report significant barriers to using current social media platforms, including cognitive overload and challenges in interpreting social cues. Rehabilitation providers may be tasked with helping to address these barriers.

Objectives

To develop technological supports to increase social media accessibility for people with TBI-related cognitive impairments and to obtain preliminary data on the perceived acceptability, ease of use, and utility of proposed technology aids.

Methods

We identified four major barriers to social media use among individuals with TBI: sensory overload, memory impairments, misreading of social cues, and a lack of confidence to actively engage on social media platforms. We describe the process of developing prototypes of support aids aimed at reducing these specific social media barriers. We created mock-ups of these prototypes and asked 46 community-dwelling adults with TBI (24 females) to rate the proposed aids in terms of their acceptability, ease of use, and utility.

Results

Across all aids, nearly one-third of respondents agreed they would use the proposed aids frequently, and the majority of respondents rated the proposed aids as easy to use. Respondents indicated that they would be more likely to use the memory and post-writing aids than the attention and social cue interpretation aids.

Conclusions

Findings provide initial support for social-media-specific technology aids to support social media access and social participation for adults with TBI. Results from this study have design implications for future development of evidence-based social media support aids. Future work should develop and deploy such aids and investigate user experience.

Factors related to the quality and stability of partner relationships after traumatic brain injury: A systematic literature review

OBJECTIVE

The latest literature review on partner relationships following traumatic brain injury (TBI), conducted a decade ago, discussed solely quantitative work and noted significant knowledge gaps. The current review updates and expands on this work by providing an overview of the current state of knowledge on factors related to relationship quality and stability following TBI.

DATA SOURCES

CINAHL, Embase, MEDLINE, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, APA PsycINFO, and PubMed were searched on April 23, 2020, for literature on factors associated with 1)relationship quality and 2)relationship stability following TBI.

STUDY SELECTION

English quantitative and qualitative studies investigating factors associated with relationship quality and/or stability following TBI were included. Two reviewers independently assessed eligibility. If consensus was not reached, a third reviewer's conclusion was decisive. Forty-three studies were included.

DATA EXTRACTION

Information regarding study objectives and characteristics, participant demographics, (in)dependent variables, and main findings was extracted. Study quality was rated using the JBI Checklist for Analytical Cross Sectional Studies and/or the CASP Checklist for Qualitative Research. Both were performed by the lead reviewer and checked by the second reviewer.

DATA SYNTHESIS

Thirty-eight factors related to relationship quality and/or stability were identified, covering injury characteristics (e.g., severity), body functions (e.g., personality changes), activities (e.g., communication), participation (e.g., social dependence), environment (e.g., children), and personal factors (e.g., coping strategies).

CONCLUSIONS

Relationship quality and stability following TBI are found to be related to a multitude of factors, including newly identified factors such as personality changes and dependence. Future research may wish to quantitatively investigate factors thus far only identified in qualitative research, explore possible positive effects of TBI on relationships, study the experiences of same-sex couples, and include the perspectives of both partners with and without the injury.

Characterizing computer-mediated communication, friendship, and social participation in adults with traumatic brain injury

BACKGROUND

Adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI) report loss of friendship and reduced social participation after injury, but there is limited information regarding quantity of friends and methods of communication. Our objective was to characterize friendship networks, social participation, and methods of communication, including computer-mediated communication (CMC), used by adults with TBI compared to uninjured adults.

METHODS

Participants were 25 adults with TBI and 26 uninjured healthy comparisons (HC) adults, who completed the Participation Assessment with Recombined Tools-Objective (PART-O) and the Social Network Questionnaire (SNQ).

RESULTS

Adults with TBI had significantly fewer total friends and significantly lower levels of productivity and overall social participation. Face-to-face interaction was the preferred method of contact for both groups. Adults with TBI were significantly less likely to use texting as a primary method of communication than their uninjured peers, but used other methods of communication at similar rates.

CONCLUSION

Our study supports prior findings of reduced friendships and reduced social participation after TBI and adds new information about similarities and differences in communication methods between adults with and without TBI.