College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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Item THE ROLE OF PERSONALITY AND COGNITIVE-LINGUISTIC DEFICITS IN TEENS AND ADULTS WITH CONCUSSION(2018) Stockbridge, Melissa Dawn; Newman, Rochelle S; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Even the mildest form of traumatic brain injury, concussion, can result in adverse physical, cognitive, behavioral, and social consequences. Concussion injuries frequently result in patients who describe deficits in daily communication and overall “fogginess,” but whose deficits are not consistently captured on traditional assessments of language. The purpose of this research was two-fold: first, to examine typed written communication in order to better understand the kinds of cognitive and language deficits that adolescents and adults experience immediately and chronically following a concussion; and second, to examine the influence of a particular trait-like dimension of personality and temperament, the propensity toward more frequent, intense, and enduring negative affect (called dispositional negativity), on exacerbation of these deficits. Using a survey conducted entirely online, 92 participants aged 12-40 years old who had a recent concussion, a history of concussion, or no history of brain injury wrote two narrative samples and an expository sample, completed multiple tasks targeting word-level and domain general cognitive skills, and provided rich self-report information important to better understanding their personality, temperament, and mental health. Performance by recently injured participants suggested that deficits in narrative language, though likely influenced by problems in word-finding, memory, and attention, also existed beyond what could be explained by those deficits alone. Narrative-specific deficits were observed in written content, organization, and cohesiveness. Moreover, including dispositional negativity in models of concussion history (group) and self-reported somatic symptomology improved the sensitivity and specificity of these models, which supports the value of considering individual differences in personality when engaged in concussion management.Item LANGUAGE PHENOTYPING IN YOUNG CHILDREN WITH CONCUSSION(2017) Stockbridge, Melissa Dawn; Newman, Rochelle S; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBIs) are typically viewed as those that do not result in prolonged periods of unconsciousness. Concussions, or the mildest form of brain injury, are the most prevalent in young children. Presently no single framework or screening assessment measure exists for language in young children. In this study, children who had recently experienced a concussion were compared with children who had no history of head injury on a battery of linguistic and cognitive-linguistic tasks. Group differences in both lexical- and discourse-level skills were identified, as well as domain-general cognitive skills. Significant differences were noted in category identification, phonological working memory, grammaticality judgment, segregation and selective attention to spoken instructions in the presence of a distractor, visually recognizing spoken targets presented in a short story, and visual non-verbal problem solving, all with moderate effect sizes. This research will inform classroom and in-home accommodations to assist children during the period of recovery.