Functional Workplace Communication Elicitation for Persons with Traumatic Brain Injury

Background: People with traumatic brain injury have characteristic pragmatic language deficits linked to unstable employment outcomes. Aims: A functional workplace communication elicitation procedure designed to assess expressive pragmatics is described. Methods & Procedures: Twenty participants with TBI,10 stably employed and 10 with unstable employment, recorded voicemail messages. Transcripts were analyzed using exchange structure analysis, codes for politeness and linguistic mazes. Outcomes & Results: Participants with unstable employment histories after TBI produced fewer politeness markers and provided information less efficiently than a stably employed cohort. Conclusions: The voicemail elicitation task differentiates high-level communication skills related to workplace outcomes in TBI