Remediating narrative discourse impairments in veterans with TBI: Initial treatment development

Cognitive-communication disorders are pervasive following TBI, disrupting communication at the level of discourse (meaningful language beyond sentence level) and social interaction. Discourse impairments impact functioning across major life domains. Research consistently shows that people with discourse impairments

following TBI have difficulty securing and maintaining work, struggle with social relationships, experience social isolation, and report a decline in quality of life. Moreover, discourse impairments affect all severity levels of TBI and persist over time. The functional impact and chronicity of discourse impairments following TBI underscore

the importance of treating these impairments. The overarching goal of this CDA-2 application is to prepare the candidate for a career in cognitive- communicative interventions research to address discourse impairments in TBI. The aims of the proposed project are to develop and trial a discourse treatment for veterans with TBI. Training goals for the project are

to: 1) develop expertise in treatment development, 2) strengthen background in TBI-related comorbidities, 3) expand knowledge of telerehabilitation and computer-aided delivery, 4) develop expertise in conducting randomized clinical trials (RCTs) of behavioral interventions, including statistical and methodological

approaches, and 5) further scientific writing, presentation skills, and grantsmanship. Narratives are a fundamental discourse genre embedded in daily conversation. Breakdowns at global levels of narrative discourse are a consistent finding in people with TBI and are apparent at the level of story content and story organization. Impairments in story content include deficiencies in completeness and

accuracy of information, global coherence, and summarization. Impairments in story organization include reductions in story grammar elements, sequences of events (episodes) and proportion of the narrative organized by episodes. Discourse intervention in TBI is a nascent area of research, and, to date, there have been only a few

studies that have attempted to improve discourse ability in TBI. These prior attempts have been small case studies, produced no change or limited gains, and did not include veterans with TBI. The proposed project is an early stage discourse treatment development study that will evaluate the feasibility of a novel narrative

discourse treatment protocol that builds upon these prior attempts with an all-veteran participant sample. The first phase of the study will consist of initial manual development for the discourse treatment protocol and refinement with a small participant sample (5-10 participants). The protocol will incorporate elements from

prior treatment studies that showed some promise: 1) hierarchical training, 2) variety of discourse stimuli, 3) development of skills and strategies for discourse processing, 4) structured training prompts, 5) meta-cognitive and meta-linguistic strategies, and 6) integration of learning principles. Novel treatment elements will include:

1) targeting both story content and story organization, 2) use of a discourse model to guide treatment, and 3) functional communication training. Treatment will be delivered twice a week over 8 weeks, with one in-person and one telehealth session each week. There will be four treatment phases: education, story organization,

story content, and integration of story organization and content. The second phase will be a treatment feasibility trial on a separate sample of participants to obtain information regarding the tolerability, acceptability, and fidelity of the proposed discourse treatment and preliminary data on treatment delivery and assessment methods as well as preliminary information about

treatment effects. Forty participants will be randomized to either the discourse treatment group or Treatment as Usual control. Assessments will be conducted at baseline, post-treatment, and at 1-month follow-up, and will include measures of discourse ability, cognition, mental health, functional communication and daily functioning.