Towards a conceptualization of language and cognitive impairment in closed-head injury: use of clinical measures

Language deficits following closed-head injury (CHI) are widely considered as impairments secondary to the cognitive disruptions common to closed-head injury. In addition, the use of standardized measures to assess the functioning of the language system in closed-head injury has mostly been limited to aphasia test batteries which examine primary language functions only. This has resulted in generalizations as to the integrity of the language system following closed-head injury, and as a consequence, consideration of the contribution of the language system to the achievement of communicative competence in this population has been minimized. This paper presents a framework in which the functional language system is identified as a hierarchical system containing primary and higher-order language processes involved in reciprocal relationship with cognitive functions at each level. A group of 25 closed-head injury subjects and 23 demographically matched control subjects were examined for linguistic proficiency using a battery of standardized tests which investigated the language system across a hierarchy of complexity, structure and predicability. In addition, 23 of the closed-head subjects were administered a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery in order to determine the nature and extent of concomitant impairments in cognitive processes and their relationship with impairments in the language system. The language battery was found to consistently discriminate between the control and clinical groups indicating that the linguistic system is significantly impaired following CHI, with the lexical-semantic system being the most vulnerable to disruption. A strong influential relationship between language and cognitive processes was statistically confirmed and the nature of the relationship between aspects of language and cognition further delineated