| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,200,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥1,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,200,000)
Fiscal Year 2003: ¥2,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,000,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Although changes in communication following brain injury are recognized, they are difficult to objectify and measure. The major aim of this research was to systematically examine the nature of cognitive-communicative impairments following brain injury, with particular reference to social prognosis. A second aim of this study was to develop the Narrative Discourse Test for Brain Injury(NDTBI).
A group of 23 brain injured were assessed narrative discourse performance and cognitive abilities twice during longitudinal follow-up. The test battery included NDTBI, Miyake verbal memory test, Rey Osterreith's complex figure test, digit span test, 7 series, Wisconsin card sorting test, WAIS-R. A control group was 26 university students.
Results indicated the followings.
1.The brain injury group uttered significantly less sentences expressing basic concepts of narratives than the control group ; specifically production of the sentences inferring relation between events or actions in a narrative was impaired. Although results at follow-up revealed significant improvement over time, the impairments of discourse abilities remained after cognitive-communicative therapy.
2.The brain injury subjects demonstrated impairments of episode memory, executive function, working memory measured with Miyake verbal memory test, Rey Osterreith's complex figure test, 7 series, Wisconsin card sorting test. The scores of NDTBI correlated significantly with the scores of these tests. It was founded that the impairments of memory, executive function, working memory affected the performance of narrative discourse in brain injury.
3.The performance of narrative discourse correlated closely with social prognosis in brain injury.
4.The results of data analysis of the brain injury group and the control group revealed that the NDTBI is effective for assessment of narrative discourse performance in brain injury. A final version of NDTBI was developed using these results.
The NDTBI will be standardized after this.
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