Appraisal of Paralinguistic behaviors in Individuals with Severe Traumatic Brain Injury and Healthy Counterparts

Traumatic Brian Injury (TBI) is one of the types of the acquired brain injury. Individuals with (TBI) are often impaired in social communication skills. Impairment in paralinguistic behaviors is one of the manifestations of failure in the social communication which adversely impacts on relationship among persons with TBI to others. Regarding the importance of paralinguistic behaviors and lack of the research in this regard in Iranian patients with TBI, the aim of this cross-sectional research was to compare these behaviors in spontaneous interaction with 4 men adults with severe TBI and 4 healthy adult men. The research questions were: How are the patients and healthy groups᾽ performances in total of paralinguistic behaviors? How are the patients and healthy groups᾽ performances in each of paralinguistic behaviors; that is, intelligibility, pitch, prosody, vocal intense, and speech fluency? The research hypotheses were: There is a significant difference between two groups in total of paralinguistic behaviors. There is a significant difference between two groups in intelligibility, pitch, prosody, vocal intense, and speech fluency. The TBI patients and healthy groups were matched on age and education years. Data analysis using non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test indicated that there was a significant difference between the patient and healthy groups in total of the paralinguistic behaviors regardless of the type of behavior (p 0.05). However, in these two paralinguistic behaviors, mean score's patients was lower than mean scores᾽ healthy individuals. The overall conclusion was that paralinguistic behaviors were impaired in individuals with severe TBI. Therefore, it is necessary to be noticed to paralinguistic aspect of communication in TBI people alongside the other behavioral, emotional, and linguistic aspects. Accordingly, it should be pathologized these behaviors in them and then, be rehabilitated.