Relationship Between Post-Traumatic Amnesia Duration and Pragmatics After Brain Injury

This study investigated post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) duration relative to pragmatic skills in chronic traumatic brain-injury (TBI). Pragmatic skills were measured by Revised Edinburgh Functional Communication Profile (REFCP). Ten males suffering TBI from MVA participated. They were > 6 months post-injury, experiencing initial PTA > 24 hours, with current normal consciousness. Pearson Product-Moment correlations revealed a significant negative relationship between PTA and nonlinguistic pragmatic skills; longer in PTA initially, lower the current nonlinguistic scores (REFCP). PTA was not significantly related to linguistic pragmatic abilities. Thus, PTA may not be a useful measure for linguistic pragmatic skill outcome beyond 6 months post-injury. However, PTA duration may influence nonlinguistic pragmatics, predicting long-term outcome of some components of pragmatic competence.