Article

Many adults with acquired brain injuries, including traumatic brain injuries
(TBI) have impaired emotion perception. Impaired perception of emotion in voice
can occur independently to facial expression and represents a specific target for
remediation. No research to date has addressed this. The current study used a
randomised controlled trial to examine the efficacy of a short treatment (three x
two-hour sessions) for improving the ability to recognise emotional prosody for
people with acquired brain injury, mostly TBI. Ten participants were allocated to
treatment and 10 to waitlist. All participants remained involved for the duration
of the study in the groups to which they were allocated. There were no
significant treatment effects for group, but analyses of individual performances
indicated that six of the treated participants made demonstrable improvements on
objective measures of prosody recognition. The reasons why some participants
showed improvements while others did not, was not obvious. Improvements on
objective lab-based measures did not generalise to relative reports of
improvements in everyday communicative ability. Nor was there clear evidence of
long-term effects. In conclusion, treatment of emotional prosody was effective in
the short-term for half of the participants. Further research is required to
determine what conditions are required to optimise generalisability and
longer-term gains.

Langue : ANGLAIS